Fintech Daily Digest

The result might be a modern version of the type of price volatility that private currencies caused in the US back in the 1830s. Bullard predicts that today's consumers and businesses won't like exchange-rate chaos any more today than people did then. He says that system's unpopularity factored into the government's decision a few decades later to replace it with a national banking system. Out of that chaos, the dollar was able to rule.

"Our solution boils down to assembling a pool of assets (contributed by sponsors), appointing an administrator (who provides enforcement of policies in extreme situations), digitizing the ownership rights on this pool, and building a special purpose narrow bank to facilitate activities of the administrator. This solution was published a year ago in both Scientific American and the Royal Society under the name Tradecoin."

We propose a practical mechanism combining novel technological breakthroughs with well-established hedging techniques for building an asset-backed transactional oriented cryptocurrency, which we call the digital trade coin (DTC). We show that in its mature state, the DTC can serve as a much-needed counterpoint to fiat reserve currencies of today.

Binance is now offering a block trading option makes it possible to traders to collect more digital assets without the need for an order book, reaching over 10 Bitcoin in value. This is good for traders that want to avoid potential loss, based on the price slippage that happens with large orders being logged.

MIT's Alex Lipton says there is a key design problem with Libra in that it would be issued in a non-immunized fashion against financial paper. Libra will need to buy high-grade paper to back the coin, so the owner of the paper will receive money from Libra (which it collected from consumers in return for Libra) and this money will start to circulate in the system. As such, there would be twice as much money in the system, with all the negative consequences.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun sending letters to more than 10,000 cryptocurrency holders, warning they may have broken federal tax laws.

We construct an empirical measure of spread (EMS) to capture the dynamics of quoted CDS spreads to derive a refined negative CDS-bond basis trading strategy. and find that the EMS can explain the movement of near future CDS spreads.

ICE-backed Bakkt is apparently gearing up to announce a Q3 launch date. It is still waiting on approval from the NY DFS to operate Bakkt Warehouse, the custodian for the bitcoin that underpins its physically delivered futures. However, some are arguing that Bakkt's guaranty fund will be too small, which Bakkt itself seems to acknowledge with plans to increase the guaranty fund over time, after the launch.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and examine the existing regulations in Nigeria's FinTech industry and to canvass for a cohesive and comprehensive legislation for Fintech in Nigeria.

The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has granted virtual currency licenses to two subsidiaries of aspiring crypto derivatives provider Seed CX.

Monex Group, the Japan-based online brokerage firm that also owns cryptocurrency exchange Coincheck, has submitted an application to join Facebook's Libra project.

WhatsApp will launch an in-app payment service later this year, with the service to initially be rolled out in India. A pilot trial of the payments service that is conducted on UPI standards is already underway.

Regulatory uncertainty in the U.S. market could hinder short-term crypto market sentiment. Also several major exchanges have limited access to certain crypto pairings for U.S. customers and Poloniex is said to have been considering a move out of the U.S.

According to the survey, over one-third of Americans are interested in buying into bitcoin, but issues such as hacks and lack of regulation are keeping cryptocurrencies from reaching a broader audience. 75% of all investors and 65% of those interested in investing in bitcoin say crime is their paramount fear.

Through Elipay, merchants can accept Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, Ether and ELI tokens (its native currency) via a platform that can be integrated into their existing infrastructure. Settlements occur immediately - and the company claims its technology eliminates the delays seen when credit card payments are being cleared. To address concerns over volatility, businesses that accept digital currencies can opt to receive revenue in their local currency, meaning no in-depth crypto knowledge is required.

Regulators and companies are scrambling to address rampant fraud on cryptocurrency exchanges; many services that sort through exchange data are now available.

"Ten years after Bitcoin began operating, we are still trying to understand it and regulators have not figured out what to do about it," said Angela Walch. "In the end, Facebook and Libra are entering the high-stakes domain of money and finance-they should expect to carry a heavy regulatory burden just as others operating in this space do."

The New York State Department of Financial Services has created a new Research and Innovation Division that will oversee the licensing of cryptocurrency firms. The division will be responsible for "licensing and supervising virtual currencies," such as BitLicense, address financial inclusion, as well as protect consumer data rights.