Fintech Daily Digest

"We find that Canada and Sweden show a similar long-term downward trend in small-denomination bank notes relative to GDP, reflecting declining cash use for transactions in both countries. These outcomes have been driven by the adoption of similar retail payment innovations in the two countries. "

The IRS' recent warning letters to 10,000 traders offer hints at what its forthcoming guidance on crypto taxes might say. While the letters are not guidance, they hint that the IRS might be changing its required methods for calculating the value of crypto holdings and the forms and schedules for reporting them. Major questions remain unresolved, including how hard forks and airdrops should be treated.

New Zealand's tax authorities have ruled that income in cryptocurrencies is legal and provided guidance on how exactly it should be taxed.

Governments worldwide are changing the way they regulate crypto assets to comply with the global cryptocurrency standards set by the Financial Action Task Force. Some are amending existing laws, while others are creating a new system to cooperate and share data.

"The PBOC will seize the trend to develop fintech, strengthen tracking and studying of the developments, and proactively meet new challenges. The PBOC will accelerate the research and advancement of China's central bank digital currency, [and] track the development of virtual currencies both at home and broad."

XRapid - which uses the XRP token to facilitate the instant settlement of money sent in one currency into a destination currency - is notably not used by many of Ripple's other clients, such as Santander, Standard Chartered, and American Express.

There are a few variations of crypto debit cards available that you should be aware of. Some crypto debit cards hold your Bitcoin directly as BTC and convert it into fiat only at the time of transactions, while other cards convert it into equivalent fiat as soon as you deposit them. On the other hand, there are also cards that are simply linked to your fiat accounts where you can switch between crypto or fiat as much as you like.

According to "Why Is XRP Underperforming?" report by cryptocurrency exchange OKEx, "as a payment solution provider, Ripple is facing intense competition," and "any negative impact on the company could easily transform into undesirable price actions in XRP."

Of the 36,836 10-K reports in the database spanning five years, only 242 reports - representing a little more than half of a percent - mentioned blockchains or distributed ledgers.

Fintech Beat talks with the former head of Bank of America's global quant business, and a co-founder of Sila Money, who has raised red flags about the Facebook Libra project. Alex Lipton argues that Libra's core design resembles the vision laid out in an open-source paper published by the Royal Society and Scientific American.

The price of the Libra will depend on the commitment to supply coins at the speed demanded. This is not a trivial matter as the Association will have to back new coins with the underlying assets. Consider an occasion in which a Libra hype leads to a very high demand for coins (not unlike what we have seen for bitcoins). To preserve the value of one Libra, the Association will have to mint new coins at the rate demanded and back them up by buying the assets in the underlying composition. It is not obvious that suppliers will be willing to do that for any level demanded.

I think twice about the utopian ideal of disintermediation and I think you should too. When all the vampire squids have gone extinct and Rich Uncle Pennybags is dead and buried, we may look back and wish we had once more the sense of order they provided. We may long for the days when our enemies were so easily defined.

The Pan-African Payment and Settlement System was formally launched by the African Export-Import Bank at the African Union Extraordinary Summit, which ended recently in Niamey, Niger Republic. The PAPSS, then becomes a continent-wide digital system to facilitate payments and settlements for goods and services in local currencies.

Thailand's central bank announced it is working with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority to develop interoperability among ledgers for cross-border funds transfer. The collaboration is part of the third phase of the Bank of Thailand's Project Inthanon.

It is safe to say xRapid is Ripple's most vibrant project right now. It has been active before, but not as alive with multiple banking institutions and other mainstream cash transfer entities as it is right now. It has been so buzzing lately that it is only recently that MoneyGram finally joined the clique of companies relying on it.

When you see a large Tether print it means a handful of wealthy clients have essentially preordered batches of Tethers, days in advance, to then dump on the market-often before it's begun to surge. Buying significant amounts of USDT also allows whales to make trades on deeply liquid crypto exchanges that do not transact in fiat currencies.