Fintech Daily Digest

Crypto-Assets: Implications for financial stability, monetary policy, and payments and market infrastructures This ECB paper summarises the outcomes of the analysis of the ECB Crypto-Assets Task Force. It concludes, in the current market, crypto-assets' risks or potential implications are limited and/or manageable on the basis of the existing regulatory and oversight frameworks.

The price of Bitcoin tumbled by 11% to about $7,000 after a $35 million sell order on London-based exchange Bitstamp triggered a rash of liquidations by other investors. Other digital currencies like Ethereum, Litecoin, XRP and Bitcoin Cash fell in sync.

Self-sovereign identity promises to return personal data to the people providing it rather than letting it sit precariously in the hands of businesses that have repeatedly failed to secure it.

World Bank and Commonwealth Bank have enabled secondary market trading recorded on blockchain for bond-i making this the first bond whose issuance and trading are recorded using distributed ledger technologies.

Facebook has set up a new Fintech company, Libra Holdings, in Switzerland focusing on blockchain and payments as well as data analytics and investing, Geneva's commercial register shows.

Blockchain analysis company Coin Metrics has found discrepancies in blockchain payments network Ripple's escrow system reporting.

On April 2 the Securities Commission of the Bahamas has filed a draft of the new bill regulating token offerings not deemed securities. The bill lays out a procedure for registering such offerings and informing authorities and investors on the details of a token sale.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Bank of Thailand have entered into an MOU to foster collaboration between the two regulatory authorities in promoting financial innovation.

Several of the world's largest banks are investing around $50M in Fnality to create a blockchain-based digital cash system to settle financial transactions. It may be an offshoot of the UBS and Clearmatics "utility settlement coin" project.

Contrary to what many think, China does not oppose blockchain technology. Rather, it takes issue with bitcoin and other privately issued cryptocurrencies, which it fears may facilitate financial fraud and capital flight. The PBOC has in fact had an initiative for issuing a blockchain-based digital renminbi since 2014. The project has already generated 71 patents and has initiated a trial operation for an interbank digital check and billing platform.

IBM and Microsoft have released new technologies focus on tackling the challenge of identity on permissioned and public blockchains respectively. The approaches are different but they give us a glimpse of how innovation is evolving in this space.

A new digital token backed by $300 million worth of gold guaranteed by the Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange has just been released in Hong Kong.

Six individuals from 'The Community' hacking group have been charged with stealing over $2.4 million in cryptocurrency using the SIM swapping method.

For the first time in five months, MakerDAO token holders have voted to decrease fees on all DAI loans. DAI is a dollar-pegged stablecoin operating on the ethereum blockchain backed by nearly 2 million ether tokens.

E-money adoption may be extremely rapid, but that it may raise significant risks. Policies to counter these risks yield a synthetic version of central bank digital currency with various advantages relative to the full-service version.

Stellar, whose lumens token is currently the eighth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, went down entirely for around 110 minutes on May 15.

Neutral Dollar is a metastable basket of stablecoins. The result is a digital dollar designed to have lower volatility than individual stablecoins by combining fragmented pools of liquidity.

Crypto industry veterans say Chinese investors are behind the recent bitcoin spike, as they try to exchange out of the falling weak yuan, as Trump has raises tariffs.

Coinbase launched its custody service 12 months ago, and the AUM has now crossed $1 billion with 70 institutions signed up.

Lost among the current bout of cryptocurrency euphoria is the fact that capital outflows are exceeding inflows on some of the biggest digital-asset exchanges