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China is launching the Blockchain-based Services Network which will be the backbone infrastructure technology for massive interconnectivity throughout the mainland and to the Digital Silk Road to provide interconnectivity to all of China's trade partners around the globe. The BSN will be a new internet protocol to allow a more efficient way to share data, value and digital assets in a completely transparent and trusted way between anyone who wants to be a node on the network.

Checkout.com will join the Libra Association in developing its series of stablecoins. Libra was announced last year as an effort to create a single global currency that could expand financial services to anyone who had a smartphone and an internet connection, though some of these ambitions have since been scaled back.

Digital payments allow people to access goods and services while in quarantine or social distancing. SARS epidemic in 2003 expedited China's path in launching digital payments and e-commerce in the country. A robust identification system, widespread, consistent internet access and trustworthy ways to get money into digital formats could be important for digital payments to thrive.

This IMF paper discusses the benefits and risks of quantum computing. On the risk side, they would crack many of the current encryption algorithms and threaten financial stability by compromising the security of mobile banking, e-commerce, fintech, digital currencies, and Internet information exchange. While the work on quantum-safe encryption is still in progress, the paper recommends that financial institutions take steps now to prepare for the cryptographic transition, by assessing future and retroactive risks from quantum computers, taking an inventory of their cryptographic algorithms (especially public keys), and building cryptographic agility to improve the overall cybersecurity resilience.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) and four other regulatory agencies summoned 13 domestic internet platform companies including Tencent, JD Finance and ByteDance for talks on their financial businesses. The firms were urged to bring their online lending and deposit-taking businesses in line with regulatory requirements, and to to refocus on their payment service business, enhance their transaction transparency and break any information monopolies. http://www.pbc.gov.cn/goutongjiaoliu/113456/113469/4241211/index.html

The concept of legitimacy (higher-order acceptance) is very powerful. Legitimacy appears in any context where there is coordination, and especially on the internet, coordination is everywhere. There are different ways in which legitimacy comes to be: brute force, continuity, fairness, process, performance and participation are among the important ones. Cryptocurrency is powerful because it lets us summon up large pools of capital by collective economic will, and these pools of capital are, at the beginning, not controlled by any person. Rather, these pools of capital are controlled directly by concepts of legitimacy.

"The solution based on blockchain technology that has been developed and tested by the Riksbank in its e-krona project provides new possibilities, but is also new and needs further investigation. This is one of the lessons learned as described in the e-krona pilot project's report on its first phase. The e-krona pilot has the objective of testing a proposal for a technical solution to increase the Riksbank's knowledge of how an e-krona could function and be used as a complement to cash... One important question is whether the e-krona will function even without access to the internet, what is known as off-line functionality, a possibility the project has not yet tested.

Polkadot is a blockchain protocol connecting multiple specialized blockchains into one unified network. Polkadot is built to connect and secure unique blockchains, whether they be public, permission-less networks, private consortium chains, or oracles and other Web3 technologies. It enables an internet where independent blockchains can exchange information under common security guarantees. The network has an advanced suite of governance tools and, using the WebAssembly standard as a "meta-protocol", can autonomously deploy network upgrades. https://wiki.polkadot.network/docs/en/getting-started

Seattle-based Bittrex today launched tokenized stocks for GameStop and other companies that have been booted off Robinhood. The listings include AMC Entertainment, Nokia, BlackBerry, Nokia Corporation, and iShares Silver Trust-all companies which are being eyed-up by internet traders who want to give the finger to Wall Street. And Bittrex isn't the only exchange capitalizing on the restrictions: FTX announced today that it was listing a WallStreetBets (WSB) index quarterly futures contract in light of Robinhood's move. And on Thursday it made GameStop's stock for tokenized futures and spot trading.

Avalanche is a platform that enables people and enterprises around the world to build decentralized solutions at scale. Now with Avalanche running on mainnet, we wanted to compile a deep overview of the platform to help you get up to speed on how the Avalanche platform works.

Sterling withdrawals from Binance's UK platform have been reactivated, with users also able to buy digital coins with debit and credit cards. Earlier in the week, the exchange's customers unable to withdraw or deposit sterling via the Faster Payments network - which enables mobile, internet and other payments between British bank accounts - or bank cards. This was days after the Financial Conduct Authority had cracked down on some of its activities in the UK.

The IMF is warning of the dire consequences of a jurisdiction adopting a crypto-asset as a national currency. For example, government revenues would be exposed to exchange rate risk if taxes were quoted in advance in a crypto-asset while expenditures remained mostly in the local currency, or vice versa. Also, most jurisdictions considering such a move have adopted a major foreign currency as their own, thereby "importing" the credibility of the foreign monetary policy. Neither of these is possible in the case of widespread crypto-asset adoption. Hence, for example, if all prices were quoted in Bitcoin, the prices of imported goods and services could fluctuate massively. In addition, banks and other financial institutions could be exposed to the massive fluctuations in crypto-asset prices. Also, legal tender status requires that a means of payment be widely accessible. However, internet access and technology needed to transfer crypto-assets remains scarce in many countries, raising issues about fairness and financial inclusion.

The "the average lifespan of a fiat currency is 27 years" idea has been showing up around the sillier corners of the internet for several years now. Economist and blogger JP Koning has done a brilliant job of finding exactly where this meme originally came from, and debunking it, in a comprehensive blog post last month.

Tencent and Alibaba's Ant Financial expanded into financial services like lending and asset management only after online payments were well entrenched. One key lesson from China's experience is that these changes do not occur overnight. It took years to develop this infrastructure and for enough consumers to trust Internet companies with aspects of their financial lives. But perhaps most importantly, fintech innovation came about because a few companies would not accept missing pieces of their environment as a given. They built new, more efficient systems rather than waiting for incumbents to do it for them.

Cyber risk rating firms are helping companies keep track of the cyber resilience of their vendors. Firms such as SecurityScorecard and RiskRecon offer a cyber score based on information scraped from the internet. These services can be integrated into firms' vendor vetting processes to continuously monitor third and fourth parties, bypassing costly site visits and questionnaires.

Protests in Hong Kong, Lebanon and Iran have forced cypherpunks to test censorship-resistant technologies in the wild.  But protesters on the ground found they lack internet access during times of civil unrest. Bitcoin has mainly proven useful for receiving value from abroad to hold and privately store. Sources in Lebanon and Iran said there is scant liquidity, and since they are cut off from global exchange platforms, digital assets are rarely useful as currency.

People in China are now required to have their faces scanned when registering new mobile phone services, as the authorities seek to verify the identities of the country's hundreds of millions of internet users.

The biggest threat to blockchain technology from quantum computing is its ability to break the traditional encryption. However, the sword of Quantum computing is not hanging on Blockchain only but on every platform that is protected with encryption. This would potentially include almost all of the Internet and Digital world we know today.

Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) have recently gained more attention for being one of blockchain's most exciting use cases, and the hype is well founded. In concept, DIDs aim to use cutting-edge cryptography and unique identifiers to enable users to validate themselves online, while still dictating when and how that identity data is used. Put simply, Decentralized IDs have the potential to help internet users around the world wrest back control of their data from the corporations that presently control it.

China's latest central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot doubles down on the previous pilot, nudging merchants and consumers to embrace e-yuan. First the new system is easy to set up and use. Merchants simply download and app to their smartphones and connect the app to their bank accounts. Then they display a QR code that customers scan to make paymants. Or, merchants can use point-of-sale machines that are updated to be compatible with the e-yuan. Either way, payments via e-yuan go directly into the merchant's bank account without any fees nor commission, while WeChat Pay or Alipay charge a fee when withdrawing from the accounts. Also, payments can be made even without an internet connection. In addition, users are compelled to use the new currency because spending in e-yuan is connected with their social credit system scores.