Fintech Daily Digest

The Board of the International Organization of Securities Commissions is seeking comments on a consultation paper that describes the issues associated with crypto-asset trading platforms (CTPs) and sets forth key considerations to assist regulatory authorities in addressing these issues.

BitPay supports settlement in 12 currencies and direct bank deposit in 37 countries. Cryptocurrency settlements are supported in over 200 countries. Cryptocurrency - Bitcoin (BTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Gemini Dollars (GUSD), Paxos (PAX), and Circle USD Coin (USDC)

The FSB is developing a toolkit of effective practices relating to a financial institution's response to, and recovery from, a cyber incident. The toolkit also aims to help supervisors and other relevant authorities in supporting financial institutions before, during and after a cyber incident.

To make sure that its new currency, a digital coin linked to the value of the dollar, is liquid and tradeable, Facebook has talked to Jump and DRW, Chicago's biggest high-frequency trading firms about making a market, according to two people familiar with the talks.

The Central Bank of Iran (CBI), via its Informatics and Services Corporation (ISC) and in conjunction with Areatak - a Tehran-based blockchain solutions provider - is developing a national blockchain project for its banking and financial sector.

A new banking law drafted for the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) would make it mandatory to obtain licenses in advance of creating, advertising or operating platforms for issuing or trading cryptocurrencies.

VODACOM Tanzania in partnership with Amana Bank has launched a new M-Pesa mobile service dubbed "Halal Pesa" to reach out to the Muslim population who are excluded in the current mobile money services.

U.S payment startups are running headlong into a thicket of federal and fragmented state money transmitter regulations, resulting in large fees and often redundant compliance costs.

South Korean bank Shinhan is using blockchain technology to verify the items of proof required for credit lending, such as qualification or certification documents, to speed up loan approvals.

JPMorgan Chase's blockchain team has developed a privacy feature for ethereum-based blockchains, obscuring not only how much money is being sent but who is sending it.

The total funds raised by IEO projects globally, since inception, stands at over $1.6 billion dollars with an overwhelming majority of these funds, ~1.4 billion being raised in 2019.

The total number of active correspondent banking relationships and active corridors continues to decline. The year 2018 saw declines in active relationships and corridors of about 3.5% and 2%, respectively. Over the last seven years, active relationships in the global correspondent banking network have declined by about 20% and the number of active corridors has fallen by roughly 10%.

Bitcoin is on track to post its second-highest quarterly gain since 2014. With custodial solutions, exchanges, and institutional trading platforms all reporting an uptick in volume, has institutional capital arrived?

At the interface between the digital (online) and physical (offline) world, the usefulness of Blockchain technology depends on intermediaries to effectively bridge "the last mile" between a digital record and physical assets, businesses, devices or events.

Blockchain firms supporting development pilots are not practicing what they preach - improving transparency - by sharing data and lessons learned about what is working, what isn't working, and why.

In its terms of service, Tether says it "reserves the right to delay redemption or withdrawal" of tether in the event of illiquidity. The company also says that it reserves the right to pay you "in-kind redemption of securities and other assets" held in its reserves.

Whatever happened to Woolf University's plan to provide higher education on the blockchain, with everyone paying and getting paid in WOOLF tickets? Woolf's home page is now devoid of the word "blockchain" and the ICO white paper and info on the token sale have also disappeared...

Two bitcoin cash mining pools carried out a 51% attack on the blockchain in an effort to reverse another miner's transactions aimed at taking coins that they weren't supposed to have access to in the wake of the May 15 BCH network hard fork.

Microsoft's Project ION (Identity Overlay Network) will allow users to mint decentralized digital identities, which aim to act as an immutable replacement for email addresses and usernames, and potentially a vault for sensitive personal data. These identities will be used to seamlessly access online applications without the need to indiscriminately surrender personal data. They could also be used in real-life applications by allowing doctors to cryptographically verify the medical details of patients, or university students to verify their qualifications. To scale to the capacity needed, Microsoft has built Project ION as a Layer 2 network, similar to Lightning but with no tokens and no signatories. Using the underlying protocol Sidetree, ION batches transactions and anchors them with a single hash, increasing efficiency and pushing fees down to what would be just a "rounding error" to Microsoft.

If you are a gift-giving foundation, foreign ministry or development advisor, could sending your aid via Bitcoin be a better way? Bitcoin's peer-to-peer digital payments network could be the future of humanitarian aid.