Fintech Daily Digest

IOSCO published its Final Report on Investor Education surrounding Crypto-Assets. This Report summarizes the results of a survey distributed to members of IOSCO's Committee for Retail Investors (C8) in autumn last year about retail investor behavior, demographics, and experiences with crypto-assets. Crypto-assets have been a key priority for IOSCO for some time and in 2022 it established a Board-level FinTech Task Force to develop, oversee, deliver and implement IOSCO's work with respect to FinTech and crypto-assets. Early work has shown that investors are drawn to invest in crypto-assets for three key reasons: (1) fear of missing out" ("FOMO") or as a speculative investment; (ii) low cost of entry; and (iii) advice from friends and/or social media. The report emphasizes that regulators need to become adept at using social media themselves to reach investors in the silos focused on digital currencies.

"A Russian plan to break the grip of the U.S. dollar through a new international payments network met a cool reception at the BRICS summit in Kazan a few days ago. Despite all of the excitable talk of new reserve currencies and gold-backed BRICSbucks, the greenback's position is actually strengthening because of an entirely different monetary innovation: dollar-backed stablecoins." (David Birch)

"At its core, programmability transforms code into enforceable legal contracts or specific market functions when interacting with tokenized asset values. This "code as law" characteristic inherently constrains intermediaries' discretionary choices. While this constraint helps reduce moral hazard in financial institutions systemically, it also means individual intermediaries will face increasing commoditization. With limited discretion over asset composition and other operational choices, institutions will find it harder to differentiate themselves, likely leading to an erosion of traditional market power as their functions become increasingly automated."

The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) in collaboration with the State Revenue Committee (Tax Authority) of the Ministry of Finance has launched a Digital Tenge pilot project focused on value-added tax (VAT) reimbursement for exporters. This initiative leverages the programmability of central bank digital currency (CBDC) to automatically mark VAT in business-to-business (B2B) transactions. By doing so, the need for manual checks by tax authorities, is eliminated, significantly streamlining the reimbursement process. It reduced the reimbursement time from 70-75 working days to 10-15 days, with the goal of achieving instant reimbursement in the near future. In total, approximately 40 billion worth of Digital Tenge is now in circulation in the various pilot projects.

Singapore's OCBC bank executed an intraday reverse repurchase (repo) transaction on JP Morgan's Onyx Digital Assets platform, in which it lent money to JP Morgan, receiving tokenized securities in exchange. Less than four hours later, the transaction was unwound together with interest. JP Morgan said this was the first time an external counterparty had the ability to execute reverse repos. It's usually JP Morgan that does the cash lending to clients, taking tokenized securities in exchange. So far it has ten clients using the repo platform, which has conducted a cumulative $1.5 trillion in transactions since its launch in 2020."

Tether charges the greater of $1,000 or 0.10% per USDT redemption transaction, and there is a minimum $100,000 redemption amount. Tether reportedly aims to send the funds to the user's bank account via wire transfer within 1-3 business days.

Circle increased the fees it charges for near-instant cash outs of its USDC stablecoin on the Circle Mint platform for the second time in 2024. Circle Mint enables wholesale providers such as exchanges, institutional traders, wallet providers, banks, and large financial institutions to directly redeem USDC 1:1 for USD from Circle. Circle Mint is not available to individuals. All USDC redemptions used to be free and unlimited, but in February 2024 a 0.1% fee on near-instant redemptions above $15 million was imposed on Circle Mint customers. Under the new fee schedule, Circle Mint customers processing more than $2 million net in daily redemptions will incur a fee that starts at 0.03% and increases in tranches to as much as 0.10% for redemptions above $15 million. Basic redemption, which offers a fee-free option, regardless of transaction volume, remains available to all Circle Mint customers as well, but processing can take up to two business days. https://help.circle.com/s/article/USDC-redemption-structure?language=en_US&category=Fees_and_Billing

According to Bloomberg, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is debating whether to shut down its wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) based mBridge cross-border payment project. The platform initially was developed by the central banks of China, Thailand, Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates under the BIS's Innovation Hub, and recently reached the minimum viable product (MVP) stage. The U.S. Federal Reserve has not joined the project. During discussions among central bankers and finance chiefs at the October 2024 International Monetary Fund and World Bank Annual Meetings, concerns were reportedly expressed about the fact that China is supplying the platform's key technological backbone.

According to Politico, a battle is brewing between the European Central Bank (ECB) and several European Union national governments over the holding limits that would be applied to a potential digital euro. Under the European Parliament's draft digital euro regulation, the ECB would decide on holding limits, consistent with a vision of the digital euro as an expression of European monetary sovereignty. However, at least nine countries, including Germany, France and the Netherlands, are reportedly concerned that allowing the ECB to set the limit would leave the institution with exclusive influence over a new tool that could have outsized effects on banking stability.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) published a paper that uses a theoretical model to show how transparency incentivises stablecoin issuers to keep a larger share of the reserves in liquid assets, thus reducing the risk of runs and potential bankruptcy ex-ante. In addition, transparency on reserves disincentivises stablecoin holders from irrationally demanding the reimbursement of their funds. The model also suggests that regulatory interventions after a run has become imminent, in the form of a suspension, can still reduce the negative impact of potential bankruptcy on consumers, and that letting assets mature after imposing the suspension can deliver the first-best social welfare outcome.

"This paper introduces a subjective measure of cash accessibility in Canada, complementing existing distance-based metrics developed by Chen, O'Habib and Xiao (2023). Analyzing data from the 2023 Methods-of-Payment Survey, this study explores how Canadians perceive their ease of accessing cash from automated banking machines (ABMs) and financial institution branches. The results reveal strong alignment between subjective perceptions and distance-based metrics, with most Canadians reporting easy access to cash sources. Those who reported lower perceived cash accessibility need to travel longer distances and tend to be young, university-educated, low-income, unemployed or cashless."

The Bank of Canada (BOC) published a paper that explores the consumer value proposition of a hypothetical digital Canadian dollar. It employs a methodology that allows participants to interact with research prototypes of increasing complexity to reveal their preferences, constraints, and adoption influences. Qualitative insights are corroborated using quantitative, large-population surveys and contrasted with results from a Bank of Canada open online public survey. The results show that most participants would support the issuance of a digital dollar, but broad early adoption is unlikely given that available payment methods meet most user needs. Important considerations for appeal and adoption include universal merchant acceptance, low costs, easy access, simplified online payments, shared payment features, budgeting tools, and customizable security and privacy settings. Participants cited these features far more often than offline functionality and the ability to make anonymous payments. The results also show that certain groups may strongly resist a digital dollar if they conflate its launch with the end of cash issuance.

Along with the aforementioned Project Ensemble collaborations, the HKMA provided updates on its other initiatives to spearhead the journey of fintech development in Hong Kong. The HKMA will collaborate with other members of the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust on interoperability aspects of DLT-based FMIs in the Ensemble Sandbox. Also, the HKMA has completed the initial phase of six tokenization use cases across four main themes under Project Ensemble and will publish a report detailing the results of the experimentation in 2025. The HKMA is working closely with the People's Bank of China to establish a cross-boundary linkage between Hong Kong's Faster Payment System (FPS) and the Mainland's Internet Banking Payment System (IBPS). This linkage will support 24/7, instant, small-value, cross-boundary remittances using account proxies like mobile numbers. A pilot launch is expected to be around mid-2025 tentatively.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has established new cross-border partnerships with Banco Central do Brasil (BCB) and the Bank of Thailand (BOT) to explore cross-border payment-versus-payment (PvP) and delivery-versus-payment (DvP) settlement use cases in areas such as trade finance payments and carbon credits. In the HKMA-BCB case the HKMA will link its Project Ensemble central bank digital currency (CBDC) sandbox to the BCB Drex CBDC pilot platform. In the HKMA-BOT case, the HKMA will link the Ensemble sandbox to the BOT's Project San experimental tokenization platform, and test linking the two platforms with distributed ledger technology (DLT) based financial market infrastructures (FMIs). https://www.hkma.gov.hk/eng/news-and-media/press-releases/2024/10/20241028-4/

The Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH) has completed the Project Mandala proof of concept (PoC), which aims to bring efficiencies to anti money laundering (AML), sanctions and capital flow management (CFM) compliance. It uses a compliance by design approach to streamline cross-border compliance processes for financial institutions and explores real-time policy and regulatory compliance monitoring for central banks and other regulators. The project preserves the existing regulatory framework whereby it encodes existing jurisdiction-specific regulatory requirements measures into the system, and maintains the current model, in which financial institutions are responsible for interpreting and applying official regulatory measures. https://www.bis.org/publ/othp87.htm

According to Governor Andrew Bailey, the Bank of England is pressing on with work on a potential retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) as it sees risks that commercial banks are failing to keep up with digital payment system innovations. The central bank is indifferent as to whether retail payments are made in central bank or commercial bank money, but it does not want to see day-to-day payments or banking-type services shift to crypto-assets or services from tech companies. "Absent innovation in commercial bank money, central banks may be left as the only game in town insofar as retail payments innovation is concerned." https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/3062/html/

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) published a status report on progress made in taking forward the IMF-FSB crypto-asset policy implementation roadmap. Jurisdictions have made progress in implementing the policy and regulatory responses developed by the IMF, FSB, and standard-setting bodies (SSBs). Nearly all FSB member jurisdictions have plans in place to develop new or revise their existing regulatory frameworks for crypto-assets and stablecoins, or they already have those frameworks in place. However, inconsistent implementation of the FSB Framework may hinder its effectiveness and lead to regulatory arbitrage. Cross-border crypto-asset activities that originate from offshore jurisdictions present elevated regulatory and supervisory challenges for authorities.

Circle published a paper that introduces Token Capital Adequacy Framework (TCAF), a risk-based capital framework designed for stable value tokens, including stablecoins, deposit tokens, and tokenized cash. TCAF assesses the capital requirements by considering both financial and non-financial risks that issuers face. Notably, TCAF quantifies the capital needed to absorb losses stemming from technological, infrastructure, and operational risks, particularly in an environment marked by rapid innovation and limited historical loss data. We apply the framework to past stress events involving stablecoins and demonstrate that TCAF is a more effective prudential tool compared to fixed-ratio or single factor capital frameworks.

The European Central Bank (ECB) will launch initiatives to help improve cross-border payments within the European Union (EU) and beyond, building on the Eurosystem's TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) service. This will include allowing instant payments originating in one TIPS currency to be settled in another TIPS currency and in central bank money, starting with euro, Swedish kronor and Danish krone. The project will also explore linking TIPS with other fast payment systems, include developing links with partners outside the EU.

BlackRock is pushing to have its money-market digital tokens more widely used as collateral for crypto derivatives trades, as Wall Street firms push deeper into digital asset markets. WisdomTree is also in conversations with prime brokerages, trading desks and crypto exchanges about the use of its fund tokens as collateral. If this type of usage takes off, it could reduce the reliance on unremunerated stablecoins like Tether among crypto traders. Users of such money-market fund tokens can earn interest rates of 4% to 5%. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-18/blackrock-wants-crypto-exchanges-to-use-buidl-token-as-collateral