Fintech Daily Digest

Bitcoin supply holdings have shifted ever since reaching the recent bottom. The most significant pattern that has emerged is that of Institutional investors scooping up massive amounts of digital assets at these discounted prices.

Darrell Duffie examines key issues around the introduction of digital currencies and faster payment systems, including financial inclusion, payment system efficiency, control by central banks of monetary policy transmission, privacy and anti-monetary laundering, and competition for banking services.

The ECB and BoJ published the outcome of Poject Stella, their joint research on DLT-based synchronised cross-border payments system. It concludes that the safety of today's cross-border payments could potentially be improved by using payment methods that synchronise payments and lock funds along the payment chain, but further reflections on legal and compliance issues, the maturity of the technology and a cost-benefit analysis would be required before the possible implementation of such new methods could be considered.

The number of open contracts for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's (CME) bitcoin (BTC) futures is reportedly at an all-time high.

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance is apparently testing a British pound stablecoin on its native blockchain, Binance Chain.

The root cause of last Sunday's Google outage was a configuration change for a small group of servers in one region being wrongly applied to a larger number of servers across several neighboring regions.

Brazilian banks will be implementing a new standardized blockchain identity solution co-developed by IBM and the central bank, CIP. It is reportedly to be integrated into the Brazilian Payment System.

Central bank digital currencies could bring profound changes to the financial system, potentially crowding out commercial banks. They could also change the way monetary policy operates. The implications for monetary and financial stability need careful consideration.

US Crypto exchanges that plan to attain the status of alternative trading systems via becoming, partnering with, or purchasing broker-dealers could have to forgo their digital custody business due to the Securities Investor Protection Act.

Hackers have breached over 50,000 servers across the world to mine cryptocurrency using unusually sophisticated tools, according to Guardicore Labs. The large-scale "Nansh0u​ campaign" malware effort has been ongoing since February, mostly targeting firms in the healthcare, telecoms, media and IT sectors.

2019 looks to be the year of the stablecoin. Since the beginning of 2017, 122 stablecoin projects have been announced but are still in development. We took a look at the projects with a stablecoin that have received the most outside funding.

Blockchain and crypto projects have raised $2.65B during May 2019. ~$1.2B, was raised through Initial Exchange Offerings.

The founding shareholders of Fnality comprise: Banco Santander, BNY Mellon, Barclays, CIBC, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, ING, KBC Group, Lloyds Banking Group, MUFG Bank, Nasdaq, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, State Street Corporation, and UBS. Clearmatics continues in its role as the technology partner to Fnality.

Thirteen of the world's biggest banks are preparing to launch digital versions of major global currencies in 2020 after years of research convinced them that the technology underpinning cryptocurrencies could be used to make trading less risky and cheaper.

Whilst governments can take different approaches to implementing SIM registration, we have asserted that 'Capture and Validate' (C&V) processes give the highest level of confidence that the person registering a SIM 'is who they claim to be'. This is because C&V enables mobile network operators (MNOs) to validate their customers' ID against a central government database, usually in real time. Globally, only 16 countries follow this approach.

Hester Pierce, aka the US SEC's "CryptoMom", has called on fellow supervisors to abandon their cautious approach to approving controversial new exchange traded funds (ETFs) and allow innovation to flourish.

The Utility Settlement Coin (USC) project - led by some of the world's largest banks - has announced the creation of a new firm (Fnality International) and closure of an accompanying £50 million Series A financing round.

SIM swapping, also known as SIM jacking, is a type of ATO (account take over) attack during which a malicious threat actor uses various techniques (usually social engineering) to transfers a victim's phone number to their own SIM card.

Facebook has begun talks with the top US derivatives regulator over its plans for a digital currency, in a sign of how the world's largest social media platform is laying the groundwork for an ambitious push in to payments.

The President of Germany's central bank, Jens Weidmann, has warned that implementing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could lead to the destabilization of global financial systems, especially during times of fiscal crisis.