Fintech Daily Digest

With 147 projects announced throughout the year, 2018 was dubbed the year of stablecoins. This year, the rate of stablecoin announcements has stabilized , with 19 diverse projects announced throughout the first quarter of 2019.

UPEUR is a stablecoin pegged at a 1:1 ratio with the Euro. Once a Universal Euro has been minted, a record of this transaction is recorded on the Ethereum blockchain. It will be Euro-pegged, and available directly on Uphold and other participating exchanges.

"This review has resulted in Kinesis being awarded a Sharia-compliant certificate for the Kinesis Velocity Token (KVT), Kinesis currencies (KAU and KAG), the Kinesis Blockchain Network (KBN) and the Kinesis Currency Exchange (KCX)."

Blockchain technologies are revolutionary in many ways, but the simple fact that blockchain is different need not require a wholly new security paradigm.

In Kenya, formal financial inclusion has risen to 83% from 27% in 2006, while complete exclusion has narrowed to 11% from 41%. Also, the disparities in financial access between rich and poor, men and women, and rural and urban areas also declined remarkably.

Western Union has teamed up with blockchain startup Coins.ph to enable residents of the Philippines to more easily receive cash remittances. While Western Union has previously teased possible relationships with Ripple and Coinbase, neither came to fruition.

According to InWara's quarterly crypto space report the number of ICOs declined by nearly 60% dramatically during Q1 2019, but the number of STOs increased by 130%.

"The Ripple development team has launched the first fiat InterLedger Protocol (ILP) connector, and it is expected to be a big step towards interoperability with traditional financial systems and gain massive adoption."

"The Federal Reserve Board is considering a decision about the future of digital banking that goes well beyond the narrow question of whether now is the time to transition to immediate payments. The board will decide whether the Federal Reserve will continue to play an operation role in digital payments."

Law firm Davis Polk discusses the current US regulatory framework applicable to cryptocurrency and other digital asset investment funds offered to US investors.

Differences in the development of FinTech credit reflect differences in income and financial market structure. The higher a country's income and the less competitive its banking system, the larger the FinTech credit volume.

Tunisia is looking to be a pioneer in implementing blockchain as the country's central bank explores the use of the technology for a national digital dinar.

A new report from Techemy Capital identifies winning and losing business models, explores underwriting options beyond "cash in the bank" and predicts the likely stablecoin market evolution through to 2022.

The Tether (USDT) premium is going up because after the PBoC ICO/exchange ban, the most convenient way to buy cryptos in China, is to buy stable coins like USDT first using OTC, and then trade it into any cryptos on exchanges.

Bitcoin is said to have increased in value by a large margin in the last seven days primarily due to the liquidation of around half a billion dollars worth of short contracts on exchanges like BitMEX.

The past couple of weeks have seen a flurry of headlines proclaiming a relatively new type of crypto asset return: income, not from trading or realizing profits, but from just holding the cryptocurrencies and tokens.

VanEck's Gabor Gurbacs said the big crypto price jump on April 1 was related to a short squeeze following a big CME bitcoin futures expiry the previous Friday.

The latest surge in Bitcoin price may have been caused by increased activity across the board as the number of active wallets has risen by as much as 40-60 percent, according to the latest data and industry analysts.

IMF's DMD David Lipton: Countries facing the challenge of Fintech have legitimate concerns about competition, about the market power of technology giants, and the cyber-risks and social disruptions that may accompany rapid technological change. Many countries worry about how data is collected and used; and how IT firms are taxed. We need to ensure that our actions enable us all together to maximize the benefits of Fintech for the benefit of all our citizens.