Fintech Daily Digest

The Vancouver-based Einstein Exchange, shut down in early November by the British Columbia Securities Commission, owes its clients $16 million but only has about $45,000 in "hard assets" remaining, according to a court-appointed receiver.

Deutsche Boerse and Swisscom utilize different blockchain protocols to settle securities transactions by exchanging cash tokens for tokenized shares in a joint proof of concept involving R3's Corda and IBM's Hyperledger Fabric.

"Libra could do to central banks what Uber and Lyft did to the taxi cartels-bust up their monopolies, or, to coin a phrase, give them a run for their money."

Fidelity has been granted a trust licence to offer trading and custody of bitcoin by the NY State Department of Financial Services, as the asset management group continues to woo cautious institutional investors into digital assets."

In what could be a death rattle for LIBOR, a competing index backed by two American companies announced it would be using the ethereum blockchain.

The potential of blockchain, DLT and smart contracts to transform the financial markets has been discussed for several years now, but with limited tangible "real world" outcomes. Greater certainty on the legal and settlement frameworks will do much to sweep away cynicism and drive forward the construction - at last - of efficient financial markets that can deliver to investors and issuers throughout the 21st century.

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision today published its Report on open banking and application programming interfaces (APIs). The report monitors the evolving trend of open banking observed in Basel Committee member jurisdictions and the use of APIs.

In a world where fully-reserved digital stablecoins reign supreme banks would have to pre-fund (by liquidating assets first), increasing the relative amount of liquid cash float the whole system needs to operate. The cash float being what it is (mostly government-debt backed), that amounts to even greater sums of guaranteed funding for the government instead of the private sector. That inevitably crowds out private investment simply because of who controls go-to "potential claims" on the economy.

"Globally, fintech deals rebounded slightly in Q3'19, but will likely fall short of 2018's record. This short-fall is due in part to the continued pull back in early-stage investing. Early -stage (seed/angel and Series A) deals fell to an eleven-quarter low and funding hit a seven-quarter low."

Grayscale Investments filed a Registration Statement on Form 10 with the U.S. SEC on behalf of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. If the SEC deems the Form 10 filing effective, the Trust's shares would be registered under the Exchange Act of 1934, potentially making it the first crypto-asset investment vehicle to become a reporting company. The shares are already publicly traded on an over-the-counter market, but reporting company status would improve transparency and liquidity for shareholders, which could potentially attract investors who are currently restricted from participating in any investment vehicles that aren't SEC-regulated reporting companies.

CryptoCompare has revised its exchange rankings and the world's largest crypto exchange by traded volumes. The top ten crypto exchanges are Gemini, Paxos' itBit, Coinbase, Kraken, Bitstamp, Liquid, OKEx, Poloniex, bitFlyer and Bitfinex.

The U.S. SEC is reviewing its decision to reject the application for a Bitcoin ETF that was submitted by Bitwise Asset Management and NYSE Arca earlier this year.

Venezuelan President Nicholas Maduro announced that the Christmas bonus of the country's retirees and pensioners will be paid to them in the national cryptocurrency Petro.

"A bond-backed currency would overcome problems created by incomplete monetary union"

"The release of Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) is only 10 days away and will mark a huge milestone reached for the MakerDAO project. MCD will introduce exciting new features to the Maker Protocol, including the much-anticipated Dai Savings Rate (DSR) and, of course, additional collateral asset types. "

The MakerDAO project launches its upgraded multi-collateral Dai stablecoin today. To the relief of many, it will not include traditional assets as accepted forms of collateral just yet. Cryptocurrency Exchange, Coinbase, has already announced support for the upgraded token from 2nd December.

Dai, launched in 2017, seeks to dodge such concerns by giving up control of the ethereum coins its value is tied to, locking them instead in the blockchain contracts run by algorithms. That, supporters say, offers the benefits of stablecoins - instant transactions and steady value - while avoiding governance risks.

CBDC can be designed with attributes similar to cash or deposits, and can be interest-bearing: a CBDC that closely competes with deposits depresses bank credit and output, while a cash-like CBDC may lead to the disappearance of cash. Then, the optimal CBDC design trades off bank intermediation against the social value of maintaining diverse payment instruments. When network effects matter, an interest-bearing CBDC alleviates the central bank's tradeoff.

Visa has developed a blockchain system called LucidiTEE that could upend how banks transfer customer transaction data to consumer financial applications like Mint and Credit Karma.

Ever since Microsoft bought Github for 7.5 billion dollars in June 2018 there have been multiple cases of censorship. For example, developers from Iran, Syria and Crimea have been blocked from the platform.