"The move comes amid a global cryptocurrency crackdown as governments from Asia to the United States fret that privately operated highly volatile digital currencies could undermine their control of the financial and monetary systems, increase systemic risk, promote financial crime and hurt investors."

"This book tells a tale of innovation, disruption, and transformation. Mobile money, e-money, e-float, e-wallets, mobile banking, however you characterise it, is not just a cool app. It s a killer app, the first for mobile phones in the developing world. It s also a disruptive innovation that threatens incumbent businesses and is sparking new business formation and entrepreneurship. Nowhere is this mobile money phenomenon more prevalent and successful than in Kenya. In five years, 19 million Kenyans, more than 70% of the adult population, have signed up for mobile money services. Fifteen million are customers of M-PESA ( M for Mobile and pesa means money in Swahili). Now, one out of every two people in the world who sends money over a mobile phone is a Kenyan. Mobile money is the rare case in which an African country is the global market leader and an exporter of innovation." The author says, "It has been so successful in these markets because it leapfrogged the payment card industry," he said, "which requires expensive ATM and Point of Sale (POS) networks to function. ATMs and POS Terminals require regular maintenance and, with ATMs, regular liquidity balancing. By leveraging third party retail outlets and making the phone the primary means of exchange, mobile money bypassed the need to distribute ATMs and POS Terminals. The reverse is true in the US: mobile money isn't leapfrogging the payment card industry, it's augmenting it."

In 2012, this article stated: "The University of Nairobi's Tonny Omwansa, who is writing a book on mobile money, believes the slow growth of mobile cash in the US comes down to Americans' trusting relationship to banking institutions, despite recent protests." Declining trust in established institutions and government since that time may mean that America is ripe for Mobile Money expansion.

The rapid uptake of mobile money in recent years has generated new data needs and growing interest in understanding its impact on broad money. This paper reviews mobile money trends using mobile money data from the Financial Access Survey (FAS) and examines the statistical treatment of mobile money under the IMF's Monetary and Financial Statistics (MFS) framework. MFS guidance is straightforward in most cases, as many jurisdictions have adopted regulations which ensure that mobile money is captured in the banking system and thus in the calculation of broad money. However, in cases where mobile network operators (MNOs) act as niche financial intermediaries outside the banking regulatory perimeter and are allowed to invest their customer funds in sovereign securities and other permitted assets, mobile money liabilities may remain outside the banking system as well as monetary statistics. In that case, information on mobile money liabilities need to be collected directly from MNOs to account for mobile money as part of broad money.

Definition of Mobile Money from IMF's Knowledge Bank

Mobile money has grown quickly in Africa and other countries with large unbanked populations. The activity and market share is attracting international and US investment and could herald a change in US options and activity for the unbanked or underbanked.

The closing of thousands of bank branches in the aftermath of the 2007-09 recession has served to intensify societal concerns about access to financial services among low- income and minority populations, groups that are often affected disproportionately in such situations. These sorts of concerns were expressed recently by, among others, researchers Terri Friedline and Mathieu Despard in an article in The Atlantic.1 We explored these concerns from the perspectives of those living in existing banking deserts as well as those who are dependent on isolated branches that, if closed, would create new deserts.

Countering a common point of view, Liberty Street Economics claims that on the policy front, physical distance from a bank seems not to be what keeps the unbanked away, and so motivating or compelling banks to open branches near the unbanked may not reduce their numbers. In fact, in the FDIC's 2015 survey, only 2 percent of unbanked respondents cited "inconvenient location" as the main reason why they did not have a bank account. Far more important reasons were "not enough money to keep in account," "don't trust banks," and "account fees too high." Those issues merit more attention than banking deserts.

Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu said the agency is working with a number of other financial regulators to coordinate digital asset regulation. Regarding cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance, Hsu "said it is necessary for regulators to 'ensure that crypto/DeFi activities that take place within the banking system or are facilitated by banks are trustworthy.'" However, since most DeFi activity "takes place outside of the regulated banking system, it is unclear whether Hsu's remarks can be interpreted as reflecting OCC's aspiration to extend its purview over DeFi platforms."

After the departure of the last Acting Comptroller of the Currency, who was looking to aggressively coordinate regulators and crypto companies, US regulators appear to be at odds with crypto and distributed ledger approaches. In Russia, on the other hand, Sber is purportedly working with Russia's central bank to register its digital assets platform, "which would pave the way for the launch of the digital assets trading platform in Russia." If the US appears hostile to crypto and Russia appears accommodating, Russia may be in a much stronger position as a world financial player if crypto continues to emerge.

A flurry of recent announcements and ventures from Sber reflected on MarketScreener are just a few of the ventures that suggest Sber is working hard to establish itself as an international player at the intersection of finance and tech. The agile effort has apparently produced the following results: "product introductions increased more than fourfold, while the average time to market (from idea to implementation) decreased more than sevenfold." For a few of the more peripheral spinoffs, see: https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/PJSC-SBERBANK-6494829/news/PJSC-Sberbank-Currency-exchange-rates-at-SberBank-branches-now-on-2GIS-maps-36465221/ or https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/PJSC-SBERBANK-6494829/news/PJSC-Sberbank-Amazing-creatures-from-deep-sea-now-on-SberBank-Online-36463962/ or https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/PJSC-SBERBANK-6494829/news/PJSC-Sberbank-Sber-opens-multimedia-fountain-in-Lipetsk-36463963/

Federal Bank regulators are struggling to figure out how to handle electronic assets in order to maintain the stability and security of the financial system while also allowing innovation and progress.

Assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist appears to have been carried out by what the New York Times calls "a high-tech, computerized sharpshooter kitted out with artificial intelligence and multiple-camera eyes, operated via satellite and capable of firing 600 rounds a minute." This and unmanned drones might herald a more expansive and ongoing set of targeted killings by state entities but also by networks, organizations, or even individuals and perhaps complicate traditional forensics in connecting actors with actions.