Fintech Daily Digest

BitMEX has finally released the unedited video of its CEO, Arthur Hayes, debating noted economist, Nouriel Roubini, at the Asia Blockchain Summit earlier this month. The 53-minute long discussion ventured into uncomfortable territories of both the bitcoin and mainstream finance. While Roubini kept his focus on the criminal nature of cryptocurrencies and their evangelists, Hayes projected them as a means to promote financial privacy.

There have been significant pricing effects sourced from both fraudulent and regulatory unease within the industry. Bitcoin futures dominate price discovery relative to spot markets. CBOE futures are found to be the leading source of informational flow when compared directly to their CME equivalent

PayPal launched Xoom-its international money transfer service-in 32 markets across Europe.

The "Banning of Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currencies" bill, which proposes to ban or heavily restrict all cryptocurrency-related activity in India, was leaked this week.

Scaling Ethereum without breaking it is a monumental task. Development roadmaps have regularly been delayed. Founder and Ethereum developer Vitalik Buterin thinks that the next era of Ethereum is at least a year off, but in the meantime, Bitcoin Cash may have all the properties needed to scale.

What is still needed for institutional adoption to take place, say experts, is more cooperation among the rising number of firms that are jumping into the market, and a process of consolidation. How long all of that will take is a matter of some debate, but the market's early adopters are acting as if it will be sooner than later.

The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may consider subpoenaing major tech companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft in search of taxpayers' unreported cryptocurrency holdings.

In a wide-reaching series of interviews this week, the Libra Association's head of policy Dante Disparte, Facebook's head economist for blockchain Christian Catalini and Facebook's blockchain project subsidiary Calibra's VP of product Kevin Weil answered questions about regulation of Libra. Here's what we learned.

The United States Senate Banking Committee has released the opening statements of David Marcus, head of Facebook's crypto wallet Calibra today, July 15. The statements come ahead of a hearing on the Libra cryptocurrency project tomorrow in the Senate, in which Marcus will testify.

"To the extent that Facebook can do this correctly, and can have a payment system correctly with proper AML [anti-money laundering measures], that's fine. But we have got a lot of work to do to convince us to get to that place."

The Senate Banking Committee staff reached out to Caitlin Long pursuant to her recent Forbes article on Libra. Here is her formal written testimony.

In terms of settlement finality , subject to certain conditions, proof-of-work settlement is preferable to legal settlement finality. However, those conditions are not likely to be met as they pertain to the well-known drawbacks such as lack of scalability, excessive energy use and the 51% attack vulnerability. Future designs of new types of blockchains will need to consider these shortcomings in order to enable the regulated industry to benefit from this technology innovation.

Facebook will not launch the cryptocurrency Libra until it has "fully addressed regulatory concerns," according to David Marcus, the head of Facebook's Calibra. The remarks are prepared testimony he plans to give tomorrow, in front of the US Senate Banking Committee.

Facebook's proposed creation of Libra is a wake-up call. It makes inescapable the need for rapid, international coordination of financial regulation. Without mechanisms to ensure consistent application of coherent global rules, we may find ourselves in a world full of "low-quality finance havens" that exist to evade financial regulations-just like "tax havens" that exist merely to evade taxes.

"The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) are focusing on understanding and regulating distributed ledger technology (DLT) and its related components. The Canadian securities regulatory agency included a section on DLT and crypto assets in its Business Plan 2019-2022 that was published on July 13. "

Japanese authorities have set up a working group to discuss the impact Facebook's proposed Libra digital coin could have on monetary policy and financial regulation, government sources said, ahead of a G7 finance leaders' gathering where the topic will be high on the agenda.

The UK Royal Mint will provide crypto custodial services for the first time everand is participating in the launch of new crypto-asset temtum. TEM is a zero-fee P2P crypto-asset aimed at creating a "new world of financial freedom away from centralised institutions."

The IMF is watching the growth of so-called stablecoins closely and today published a paper that identifies their benefits and risks, and highlights some regulatory issues that are likely to emerge.

"A large platform utility may not establish, maintain, or operate a digital asset that is intended to be widely used as medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value, or any other similar function, as defined by the Fed."

A "self-sovereign identity" system, in which consumers are able to protect their own data, is being developed by the participants for faster services. For instance, a student can be issued a new ID in less time as they won't have to submit related papers in person, thanks to blockchain technology.