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Strike CEO Jack Mallers revealed that the firm would be integrating with the top five banks and two biggest cashpoint distributors in El Salvador. He said the cashpoint stores would enable people to exchange cash for balances on a mobile app like Strike and vice versa. The integrations would remove the need for USDT because Strike would be able to hold customers' balances at the banks. It would also give them more places to cash out those balances for fiat currencies. The original plan was to hold recipient funds in USDT due to Strike's limited banking options at the time.

To carry out its plan to make Bitcoin legal tender, El Salvador will rely on partners like Zap Solutions, whose digital wallet Strike is already being used by some Salvadorans. Although Strike has the technology to help El Salvador embrace Bitcoin, it appears not to have the US money transmitter licenses needed to make it useful for sending remittances from the United States. This could make many cash and crypto transfers to El Salvador using Strike potentially illegal.

"Strike, the global money app for Bitcoin and fast, secure payments, yesterday announced the expansion of "Send Globally" to Mexico. With this expansion, it will bring its payment service to the largest remittance market in the US."

The 1859 "Carrington Event" produced so much geomagnetic activity that sparks flew from telegraph equipment. If it happened today, it could debilitate power in urban centers, cut off GPS, and put satellite communications at risk.

Hedera executives believe that Facebook potentially hijacked their idea for a council of trusted companies to operate a blockchain, but that the company probably hasn't broken the law in any way. Hedera hoped to strike a partnership with Facebook, and build their crypto project on a finished product.

Goldman Sachs is close to striking a deal with Amazon to offer small business loans to its US customers as the Wall Street bank turns to Big Tech to extend a push on to Main Street.

In a coordinated strike against some of the best-known companies in crypto, a US law firm issued a barrage of class-action lawsuits aimed at Binance, Block.one, Bitmex, Tron and several others. The lawsuits allege that the firms bilked investors by selling unlawful securities in the form of digital tokens.

According to the OECD, competition will increase as new players enter the industry, but the long-term impact is more open, and regulation shall decisively influence to what extent BigTech shall enter the industry and who shall be the dominant players. Pursuant to OECD's view, the challenge for regulators will be to keep a level playing field that strikes the right balance between fostering innovation and preserving financial stability where the consumer protection concerns rise to the forefront.

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele announced that he will send a bill to the country's congress to recognize Bitcoin as legal tender. The forthcoming legislation is being framed as the next step in a partnership between Strike, which launched its crypto wallet app in the country in March. Reportedly, some 70% of the population there does not have a bank account, and 20% of the country's GDP comes from remittances sent by migrants to family members. If Bukele's Bitcoin bill goes through without a hitch, El Salvador will be the first nation to officially recognize Bitcoin as legal tender.

Crypto custodians are in a race to build the next State Street or BNY Mellon. There are only a handful of these types of large custody banks and most of them have been around for hundreds of years. But crypto is such a striking example of old world meeting new that it offers firms a rare opportunity to break into a market that would simply be impossible under normal circumstances.

"Physical cash should be the standard for evaluating how to strike a balance between ensuring privacy and adhering to anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CTF) rules. At a minimum, this implies allowing real anonymity and transaction privacy for daily life transactions up to limits that are similar to the current limits for cash. In addition to full anonymity for low-value transactions, a high level of pseudo-anonymity should be provided for all larger transactions to ensure a high level of identity protection."

"The legal status of XRP, then, seems to possess a kind of quantized duality, Schrodinger's Shitcoin - it's a security when sold to an institutional investor in a primary sale, but not a security when sold behind the anonymity of a cryptocurrency exchange, or when sold in exchange for services to insiders.  This position strikes me as deeply unsatisfactory from the standpoint of regulatory consistency - no other security magically transmogrifies from a security to a non-security depending on to whom it is sold, or after it is sold more than once - as well as being a manifestly incorrect application of the line of precedents relating to the first and third Howey prongs when one considers the entirety of the reasons why an XRP purchaser buys XRP tokens.   "

According to the Bank of Canada, decentralized finance (DeFi) has grown rapidly in scale and scope, forming a complex ecosystem with a high degree of interconnectedness. Its innovative elements, such as smart contracts, composability and tokenization, hold potential for future monetary and payment systems. However, challenges remain, as DeFi introduces new risks to the financial system. Policy-makers and regulators need to strike a balance between promoting innovation and mitigating risk.

"I really hate to do this, @CaitlinLong_ as I count myself a fan of yours as well as a fan and friend of Manhoman Singh, whose work you mention. But I'm afraid your thread commending some aspects of Liberty Street's stablecoin post strikes me as more self-serving than accurate."

Banco Central do Brasil is reportedly pushing out its CBDC pilot work from end-2022 to 2023. This is due to a workers' strike at the central bank, which impacted the original schedule.

Bitcoin's high during its last bull cycle in 2017 $19,511 is widely seen as the level at which many hodlers will capitulate and wind-down leverage (bitcoin is currently hovering above the $20,000 level). According to Arcane Research, throughout its roughly 12-year trading history, bitcoin has never dropped below previous cycle peaks, so a break below it would be momentous. In addition, most of the open interest in bitcoin options is based on the $20,000 strike price, which could contribute to selling pressure in the spot market should the price fall below that level.

"The Silicon Valley Bank failure strikes me as a colossal failure of bank regulation, and instructive on how rotten the whole edifice is. I write this post in an inquisitive spirit. I don't know the details of how SVB was regulated, and I hope some readers do and can chime in. "

The National Bank of Cambodia's (NBC's) Bakong online banking and mobile payments app has seen its adoption levels surpass 10 million accounts (about 60% of Cambodia's population. Bakong allows Cambodians to transfer and receive digital funds using their smartphones without traditional bank accounts. The NBC has also established cross-border payment connectivity with Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam, and signed MOUs with the Central Bank of Solomon Islands, the Reserve Bank of Fiji, and the National Bank of Rwanda, to expand the reach of Bakong to these countries. In addition, the NBC has signed a memorandum of cooperation with Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, to facilitate QR code-based payments between Cambodia and Japan.

The IMF published a paper that combes administrative data on credit, internet penetration and a land reform in Rwanda, to showsthat the complementarity between technology and law can overcome financial frictions. Leveraging quasi-experimental variation in 3G availability from lightning strikes and incidental coverage, it shows that mobile connectivity steers borrowers from microfinance to commercial banks and improves loan terms. These effects are partly due to the role of 3G internet in facilitating the acquisition of land titles from the reform, used as a collateral for bank loans and mortgages. The paper quantifies that the collateral's availability mediates 35% of the overall effect of mobile internet on credit and 80% for collateralized loans.

A three-judge bench of the court ruled on Wednesday in favor of petitions by crypto exchanges and startups that opposed the decision made by the Reserve Bank of India in April 2018, which banned domestic financial institutions from providing banking services to crypto exchanges.