The Weekly Hash – February 3 – 7
Check out this past week’s happenings in the world of crypto, brought to you by the experts at Kraken.
This digest is prepared for informative purposes only and does not represent an investment recommendation or investment advice. Please see our full disclaimer at the bottom for more information.
See below all the important happenings this week in the world of crypto, presented by the experts at Kraken:
- Bloomberg: Bitcoin’s Network Operations Are Controlled by Five Companies
- The Block: A Bitcoin ETF Won’t Be Approved in the U.S. This Year, Most 2020 Outlook Survey Respondents Say
- PBoC: The People’s Bank of China Will Print $174B to Offset Economic Effects of Coronavirus
- CoinDesk: Mastercard Left Libra Association Over Regulatory and Viability Concerns, Says CEO
- CoinDesk: Bermuda Is Planning a Comprehensive Crypto Ecosystem
- Emirates News Agency: MoHAP Launches Blockchain-Based Platform for Storing Data
- Kraken: Kraken Releases ‘Into the Ether’ a Distilled Deep Dive on Ethereum
- CoinDesk: Ethereum Incubator ConsenSys Slashes Headcount 14% in Latest Strategic Shift
- BitSpark: Blockchain Remittance Firm BitSpark Shutting Down 6-Years After Launch
- Ledger Insights: Sony Invests in Tokenization Firm Securitize
- The Block: U.S. Government to Auction Off More Than 4,000 BTC on Feb. 18
- Decrypt: Bitcoin Breaks 500M Transaction Milestone
- CoinTelegraph: Telegram Reveals Catchain, a BFT Consensus Algorithm
- Ripple: Enabling Faster Cross-Border Payments Between the U.S. and Mexico
- CoinDesk: Pantera, Square Join $14m Series-A Round for Real-Time Payments Startup Transparent
- The Block: Lightning Labs Raises $10M Series A, Launches Beta Version of its First Financial Product
- Bloomberg: Goldman Loses Crypto Czar as Another Tech Partner Departs Bank
- The Japan Times: Bank of Japan, ECB and Other Central Banks to Discuss Starting Digital Currencies
- Federal Reserve: The Digitalization of Payments and Currency—Some Issues for Consideration
- CoinDesk: SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Proposes 3-Year Safe Harbor Period for Crypto Token Sales
- Bloomberg: Japan Seen Needing U.S. Help to Check China’s Digital Yuan
- CoinDesk: ‘95% Confidence’: Ethereum Developers Pencil In July 2020 for Eth 2.0 Launch
- CFTC: CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee to Meet on February 26
- The Block: Australian Government Issues National Blockchain Roadmap to Help Drive Adoption
- FINMA: FinSA/FinIA—Follow-Up Regulation by FINMA
- CoinTelegraph: Value Locked in Crypto DeFi Markets Hits $1 Billion Milestone
- Bloomberg: Bitcoin’s Network Operations Are Controlled by Five Companies
- According to TokenAnalyst, five mining entities based in China – AntPool, BTC.com, BTC.top, F2 Pool and ViaBTC – control 49.9% of all computing power on the Bitcoin network, the highest concentration of mining power ever
- The mining entities are available via BitDeer, which lets consumers rent mining power, “Once a consumer has paid BitDeer for a plan, they can assign that hashrate to any partnership mining pool. Does it really make a difference anymore? What is to stop the entities merging into a single large entity that maintains a degree of separation [only by having separate addresses where they receive rewards?]”
- The Block: A Bitcoin ETF Won’t Be Approved in the U.S. This Year, Most 2020 Outlook Survey Respondents Say
- The Block’s 2020 Outlook Survey – which included 106 participants from the VC, financial services and digital asset industries – found that the vast majority don’t believe U.S. regulators will approve a BTC ETF this year
- 82 respondents (77.4%) said “no” when asked, “does a bitcoin ETF pass in the US in 2020?,” while 24 responders (22.6%) said yes
- The report claims that the barriers to SEC-approval include concerns about manipulation in the spot markets that would feed price data to any approved ETF
- PBoC: The People’s Bank of China Will Print $174B to Offset Economic Effects of Coronavirus
- The People’s Bank of China announced that it will inject $174B into its economy in an effort to offset the damage caused by the coronavirus, “In order to maintain reasonable and abundant liquidity of the banking system and stable operation of the currency market during the special period of epidemic prevention and control, on February 3, 2020, the People’s Bank of China will launch a 1.2 trillion yuan open [~$174B] market reverse repo operation to invest funds to ensure adequate liquidity supply. The overall liquidity of the system is 900 billion yuan [$128B]more than the same period last year.”
- China’s stock market fell by 8% today – its worst day since 2015 – ostensibly due to fear over how the virus might affect China’s economy
- Coverage by Decrypt
- CoinDesk: Mastercard Left Libra Association Over Regulatory and Viability Concerns, Says CEO
- Mastercard CEO Ajay Banga said the payments giant quit Facebook’s Libra project due to concerns over its business model, questionable data integrity, and KYC/AML compliance, “When you don’t understand how money gets made, it gets made in ways you don’t like.”
- Libra was initially positioned as a financial inclusion tool, but when it transited to a proprietary digital wallet Calibra it raised a red flag for Mastercard, “It went from this altruistic idea into their own wallet. I’m like: ‘this doesn’t sound right.’”
- Banga added that financial inclusion would mean a government is able to pay citizens in a certain currency, which they must be able to understand how to use and must be usable in day-to-day txs for items like food, “If you get paid in Libra [coin] . . . which go into Calibras, which go back into pounds to buy rice, I don’t understand how that works.”
- Coverage by The Block & CoinTelegraph
- CoinDesk: Bermuda Is Planning a Comprehensive Crypto Ecosystem
- Bermuda’s chief FinTech advisor Denis Pitcher plans to create a system that allows Bermudians to spend digital currency on gov’t services, “By allowing the government to accept it, it provides an opportunity for merchants to start saying, ‘Well, I can look at accepting digital dollars. So taxi operators, tourism operators, commercial businesses have a place to actually spend, which means that you’re not going to have to fall back to the traditional financial system.”
- Pitcher hopes the system will introduce ordinary Bermudians into the global financial ecosystem, “Our history allows us to really understand financial services. But the challenge that comes from this is that when it comes to access to financial services, Bermudians are largely excluded. We don’t have access to PayPal, Revolut or Square and in order to actually get access to the Apple App Store we buy credit or gift cards […] “We’re too small. Nobody cares about 60,000 people.”
- Emirates News Agency: MoHAP Launches Blockchain-Based Platform for Storing Data
- The Ministry of Health and Prevention (MoHAP) partnered with the Ministry of Presidential Affairs, Dubai Healthcare City and other relevant health authorities to launch a blockchain-based platform to store the data for health, pharmaceutical gov’t and private facilities, health practitioners, and drug info
- The platform aims to improve the efficiency of MoHAP and other health authorities’ smart health services, in line with the outcomes of the annual meetings of the UAE gov’t, “It will help streamline the search for health facilities and its licensed medical and technical personnel, and their expertise.”
- Dr. Amin Hussein Al Amiri, Assistant Undersecretary of MoHAP’s Public Health Policy and Licenses, said the initiative is in-line with the Ministry’s plans for introducing AI into health services, adding that the platform will contain AI functionalities, “The AI-based projects will play a key role in enhancing the capabilities of health care services and providing smart medical solutions, in accordance with the UAE Centennial 2071, and its artificial intelligence strategy.”
- Kraken: Kraken Releases ‘Into the Ether’ a Distilled Deep Dive on Ethereum
- Kraken Intelligence is proud to release the Into the Ether research note, which gives a succinct yet comprehensive overview of Ethereum
- “Into the Ether” explains Ethereum’s tech, traces its historical market adoption, and concludes with detailed sections on the project’s planned upgrade to Ethereum 2.0
- Topics include: Who founded Ethereum?; how does Ethereum differ from Bitcoin?; how has Ethereum evolved?; what is Ethereum’s roadmap?; and which platforms could challenge Ethereum?
- Download our full report here
- CoinDesk: Ethereum Incubator ConsenSys Slashes Headcount 14% in Latest Strategic Shift
- Ethereum development studio ConsenSys has reduced headcount by 14% and is dividing its software development and investment efforts as part of a restructuring, “Over the past year, ConsenSys undertook a deep strategic review and articulated two separate strategies to grow and support the ecosystem as a software company and a separate investment company […] In the coming months, ConsenSys will finalize the transition from its venture production model and spin out a number of its internally funded projects into the ConsenSys Investments portfolio.”
- A source familiar with the matter said the split in efforts was a result of difficulties in raising funds for a firm that was involved in both investment and software development, and that ConsenSys is now eyeing a $200M raise
- The move is meant to prioritize the development of some of the Ethereum ecosystem’s leading infrastructure platforms, “ConsenSys will operate a software business composed of several of its products optimized for a modular stack, which includes Infura, PegaSys, MetaMask, and Codefi, among several others. The business is focused on two goals: providing developer tools and infrastructure for the developer, decentralized finance, and startup communities; and helping enterprises in the financial services, trade finance, and commerce sectors deploy and operationalize blockchain solutions.”
- ConsenSys’ investment arm “will continue its venturing activities by supporting its current portfolio of industry-leading companies and investing in best-in-class teams building at the protocol, infrastructure, application, and business layers, under the direction of a focused investment management team […] The priority for new investments includes early-stage equity, liquid digital assets, and strategic opportunities where applicable.”
- The firm also acquired American broker-dealer Heritage Financial Systems to reinforce its advisory and broker-dealer capabilities, which will help the firm to implement blockchain for issuing tokenized bonds offerings in the municipal market
- Coverage by The Block
- BitSpark: Blockchain Remittance Firm BitSpark Shutting Down 6-Years After Launch
- George Harrap, CEO of Hong Kong-based blockchain remittance firm BitSpark, announced the company is closing operations next month and customers have until Mar. 4 to withdraw their funds (users can withdraw funds via BitSpark customer support until June 2)
- Harrap said BitSpark is shutting down due to “internal restructuring,” adding that Hong Kong protests and coronavirus also weighed in on the decision
- The restructuring included BitSpark co-founder and COO Maxine Ryan quitting from her role, “As of a month ago, I made the decision to step down from my position as COO of BitSpark. This naturally caused a need to restructure the company which unfortunately landed this result […] While I hoped the company would continue especially due to the MOM [month on month] growth, it was determined that due to its inconstancy it wasn’t predictable enough to continue.”
- Coverage by The Block
- Ledger Insights: Sony Invests in Tokenization Firm Securitize
- Blockchain firm Securitize received a six-figure investment from SFV GB, the corporate VC fund managed by Sony Financial Ventures (SFV) and Global Brain, as part of an extension from its recent $14M funding round
- Securitize co-founder & CEO Carlos Domingo said, “The investment validates Securitize as one of the most important architects of digital capital markets while adding another marquee name to a growing list of companies who are investing in digital securities as the future of global capital markets.”
- The firm has raised +$30M in funding to date
- Coverage by The Block
- The Block: U.S. Government to Auction Off More Than 4,000 BTC on Feb. 18
- On Feb. 18, the U.S. Marshals Service will auction off ~4,041 BTC (~$37M) that was seized in various federal criminal, civil and administrative proceedings, “The USMS will notify all bidders about their eligibility to participate in the auction by email no later than 5:00 PM EST on Thursday, February 13, 2020.”
- A $200,000 deposit is required for those wishing to participate, and would-be bidders must register by Feb. 12
- The auction will see four blocks – 2,500 BTC, 1,000 BTC, 500 BTC and 40.54 BTC, respectively – during the event
- Coverage by CoinTelegraph
- Decrypt: Bitcoin Breaks 500M Transaction Milestone
- According to data site Statoshi, there have now been 500M bitcoin txs (block height 616,064) since the launch of the bitcoin network on Jan. 3, 2009
- The number of txs on the network has doubled since 2017; at this rate, we can expect to see 1B txs in two years
- CoinTelegraph: Telegram Reveals Catchain, a BFT Consensus Algorithm
- Telegram co-founder Nikolai Durov released a paper that details Telegram Open Network’s (TON) consensus mechanism, dubbed Catchain; the consensus mechanism is a Byzantine Fault Tolerant (BFT) PoS algorithm (similar to NEO or Cosmos) that functions as long as 1/3 nodes aren’t malicious
- The system focuses on validating each block as it gets created, which occurs via a block generation round where validators have a limited amount of time come to an agree, otherwise they’re skipped
- Each validator has a clear role during a block voting procedure: some create blocks, others propose blocks for voting, and the remainder vote on the proposal with roles shifting each round to should ensure the correctness of the procedure
- Telegram is set to have no more than 100 validators for the master chain and from 10–30 for each “shard chain”
- According to tests in 2018, a block can be generated every five seconds, undergoing the full consensus procedure each time
- TON devs reported that the system is similar to Cosmos and Algorand, with the differences lying in the specifics, such as how the nodes communicate with each other
- Ripple: Enabling Faster Cross-Border Payments Between the U.S. and Mexico
- Ripple has partnered with Nasdaq-listed Intermex, a remittance services firm focused on the LATAM and Caribbean corridor, to enable “Intermex to leverage RippleNet for faster, transparent cross-border remittance services between the United States and Mexico.”
- According to the World Bank, Mexico is the third highest country with remittance recipients, $36B remittance flows in 2019
- Intermex is one of the largest U.S. to Mexico remittance providers in the world, processing +30M payment txs a year with a network of 100,000 payer locations
- CoinDesk: Pantera, Square Join $14m Series-A Round for Real-Time Payments Startup Transparent
- Transparent Financial Systems (TFS), a Seattle-based startup developing a real-time “cryptographic settlement” network, closed a $14M Series-A funding round led by Pantera Capital and with participation from Square, Future\Perfect Ventures, DCG and more
- The funding round is in addition to $8M in seed financing TFS received in July 2018 from Vulcan Capital, which is the firm that TFS spun-off from
- The company will use the funds funding to accelerate product development and engineering, as well as to expand outside the U.S.
- Vulcan Capital CEO Chris Orndorff said, “The financial industry is ready for new technology to improve the way people pay for goods and services […] The team at Transparent has made impressive strides over the course of its first year, and we are excited to continue our work with them as their strategic partner and new investor that honors Paul Allen’s vision for the next wave of fintech.”
- TFS’ product, which focuses on B2B payments, should be ready for early production use late 2020
- As part of the deal, Pantera and Future\Perfect will join Vulcan on Transparent’s board of directors
- The Block: Lightning Labs Raises $10M Series A, Launches Beta Version of its First Financial Product
- Lightning Network (LN) development team Lightning Labs has raised $10M in a Series A funding round led by Craft Ventures, with participation from Ribbit Capital, RRE Ventures, Slow Ventures, and others
- Lightning Labs CEO Elizabeth Stark said, “We are building a real business with real customers and real revenue, and we want to solve real problems for real users… We will be using the fund to hire more talent on the development and business side.”
- The firm announced the beta release of Lightning Loop, a non-custodial service that provides the on-and-off ramp for users to move funds between the LN
- Through Submarine Swaps, a technique designed to enable atomic on-chain to off-chain swaps, Loop allows users to move BTC out of their LN channels onto the BTC blockchain to free up channel space and receive more funds, as well as to allow users to refill channels with on-chain BTC from wallets or exchanges, “There is this liquidity element to Lightning, where you have to have funds to be able to send or receive in the right place, so Loop is helping startups and companies to efficiently allocate their funds to Lighting.”
- Loop has already attracted ~30 adopters, including e-commerce startup Fold
- Stark added, “I view Lightning as a financial transaction and infrastructure platform […] I really see Lightning as at the intersection of the financial world and the tech world.”
- Coverage by CoinDesk
- Bloomberg: Goldman Loses Crypto Czar as Another Tech Partner Departs Bank
- Rana Yared, the Goldman Sachs partner who spearheaded the bank’s crypto efforts, is leaving the Wall Street giant to join a unnamed VC firm, “[Yared] played a key role in a group that invested the firm’s own capital in emerging tech companies, and helped drive big returns for the trading unit through that operation.”
- Yared said, “I would not describe myself as a true believer who wakes up thinking Bitcoin will take over the world […] For almost every person involved, there has been personal skepticism brought to the table.”
- Speaking to the interest among institutional firms, she added that “[i]t resonates with us when a client says, ‘I want to hold Bitcoin or Bitcoin futures because I think it is an alternate store of value.'”
- Coverage by The Block
- The Japan Times: Bank of Japan, ECB and Other Central Banks to Discuss Starting Digital Currencies
- The ECB and the central banks of Japan, U.K., Canada, Sweden and Switzerland will meet in mid-April to discuss issues regarding central bank digital currencies (CBDC)
- Discussions will be centered around conducting joint research on the potential creation of digital currencies and potential challenges, such as cross-currency settlement and defending against cyberattacks
- The meeting will occur in Washington on the sidelines of an IMF conference, and the banks will likely issue a report on their discussions later in the year
- BOJ board member Takako Masai said, “In Japan, we don’t have any plans now to issue central bank digital currencies […] But we need to make an effort so we’re ready to respond, in case public demand for central bank digital currencies rises dramatically”
- Facebook’s Libra plans coupled with a move for a digital yuan in China ostensibly prompted central banks to accelerate research into digital currencies
- Federal Reserve: The Digitalization of Payments and Currency—Some Issues for Consideration
- Federal Reserve board member Lael Brainard said the Fed is “conducting research and experimentation related to distributed ledger technologies and their potential use case for digital currencies, including the potential for a CBDC [central bank digital currency]” in an effort to find an effective counter to private initiatives such as Libra
- Brainard said, “By transforming payments, digitalization has the potential to deliver greater value and convenience at lower cost,” adding that USD’s global importance means the Fed needs to “remain on the frontier of both research and policy development” of digital currencies
- The Fed official warned that the central bank must evaluate if the tech would make payments safer, reduce operational costs, and whether they would present new risks to the financial system; working with the private sector, U.S. officials would have to determine “whether new guardrails need to be established, whether existing regulatory perimeters need to be redrawn and whether a CBDC would deliver important benefits on net.”
- Brainard said the surprise release of Libra last summer “imparted urgency to the debate over what form money can take, who or what can issue it, and how payments can be recorded and settled […] Some of the new players are outside the financial system’s regulatory guardrails, and their new currencies could pose challenges in areas such as illicit finance, privacy, financial stability and monetary policy transmission.”
- Although the Fed hasn’t joined the BIS’ working group of central banks for collaboration on CBDCs, Brainard noted that the Fed was already “collaborating with other central banks as we advance our understanding of central bank digital currencies.”
- Coverage by CoinDesk
- CoinDesk: SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce Proposes 3-Year Safe Harbor Period for Crypto Token Sales
- SEC commissioner Hester Peirce formally proposed giving crypto startups a 3 year grace period from their first token sale to allow for startups to develop their networks and communities before passing through the agency’s evaluations; at the end of the grace period, projects must determine whether token txs constitute securities txs
- The proposal states, “The analysis of whether a token is offered or sold as a security is not static and does not strictly inhere to the digital asset,” meaning some tokens may appear to be a security at launch but mature to the point where it no longer is a security
- If adopted the law would create strict requirements for crypto projects to raise funds through a token sale, including requiring personal disclosures, code disclosures, public notices and a number of other factors, “The safe harbor is also designed to protect token purchasers by requiring disclosures tailored to the needs of the purchasers and preserving the application of the anti-fraud provisions of the federal securities laws.”
- The proposal defines an “initial development team,” which will manage the network’s development over its first 3yrs, and “network maturity,” referring to a network that is “not controlled and is not reasonably likely to be controlled” by a single entity or individual but is operational, “The definition of Network Maturity is intended to provide clarity as to when a token transaction should no longer be considered a security transaction but, as always, the analysis will require an evaluation of the particular facts and circumstances.”
- The dev team should disclose “the names and relevant experience, qualifications, attributes or skills” of each member, as well as how many tokens each member holds and how many they may earn through founders’ rewards or similar programs
- Teams should look to create liquidity for the token by securing compliant secondary trading markets in addition their development efforts, “Admittedly, the liquidity condition may surprise observers of SEC staff positions in which attempts to facilitate secondary trading have been viewed as indicia of a securities offering. In the context of the safe harbor, by contrast, secondary trading is recognized as necessary both to get tokens into the hands of people that will use them and offer developers and people who provide services on the network a way to exchange their tokens for fiat or cryptocurrency.”
- The proposal would require a token project’s source code, tx history (and a description of how to independently search tx history), token economics, roadmap and a history of past token sales all be disclosed on a free and publicly accessible website
- The proposal is dependent on development teams acting in good faith and wouldn’t be available to any teams with members who are already disqualified “as a bad actor under the securities laws” due to past actions
- The proposal wouldn’t protect projects from any enforcement actions taken due to fraud or other illicit activities, “SEC enforcement has played an important role in combating fraud in connection with token sales. The safe harbor would not provide immunity from such actions.”
- The safe harbor would be focused on initial stage projects to ensure they can move beyond their first steps in building a network or community, “This bad actor provision is not directed at teams that set forth a plan for a network and work earnestly toward building it, but fail to bring it to fruition. Rather, it is designed to ensure that the SEC can bring suit against a team that sets out to defraud token purchasers by materially misrepresenting or omitting key information. We all know that there are plenty of those kinds of ‘projects’ polluting the crypto space.”
- Coverage by Decrypt
- Bloomberg: Japan Seen Needing U.S. Help to Check China’s Digital Yuan
- According to Norihiro Nakayama, Japan’s vice minister for foreign affairs, the country needs closer cooperation with the U.S. to curb the potential influence of China’s planned digital currency and hopes the Fed will partner with six other central banks including the Bank of Japan in studying CBDCs, “We sense the digital yuan is a challenge to the existing global reserve currency system and currency hegemony. Without the U.S., we cannot counter China’s efforts to challenge the existing reserve currency and international settlement system.”
- Nakayama added, “There are 1.4 billion people in China, so within the one belt, one road digital economic framework, the digital yuan has a high likelihood of becoming the standard within that digital economy.”
- The lawmaker pointed to China’s large presence in Africa and said Japan needed to ensure it had the tech expertise and capacity to respond to the challenge of the digital yuan before it circulated en masse in the country
- Coverage by The Block
- CoinDesk: ‘95% Confidence’: Ethereum Developers Pencil In July 2020 for Eth 2.0 Launch
- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he has “95% confidence” that Ethereum 2.0 (a.k.a. Serenity), the blockchain’s widely anticipated network upgrade to transition from a PoW system to PoS, will launch on July 30
- The ETH 2.0 team said the network won’t launch until three clients can run testnets consistently for a minimum of eight weeks
- ETH 2.0 researcher Danny Ryan and Buterin believe ETH 2.0 could deploy Phase 0, the Beacon Chain, which acts as a general manager of ETH 2.0’s PoS system, on only two stable clients; however, other ETH 2.0 researchers are opting for a more conservative approach
- Phase 0 and Phase 1 are 99% and 90% complete, respectively
- Phase 1 will link ETH holders who have staked their assets to the Beacon Chain
- ETH 2.0 researcher Diederik Loerakker said third-party code audits and testnets remain the outstanding tasks
- ETH 2.0 will require 32 ETH (~$6,400) to participate as a staking validator
- Ryan added that ETH staking contracts are under audit with an announcement expected this spring at a major Ethereum event
- The team said there could be millions of validators with one researcher claiming up to 10% of ETH’s supply could be staked
- CFTC: CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee to Meet on February 26
- The CFTC’s Technology Advisory Committee (TAC) will hold a meeting on Feb. 26 to hear presentations on stablecoins, audit trails, compliance solutions, and crypto self-regulatory organizations (CROs), insurance, and custody
- CFTC commissioner Brian Quintenz is the TAC’s sponsor
- The meeting is open to the public and will be broadcast live on the CFTC’s website
- The Block: Australian Government Issues National Blockchain Roadmap to Help Drive Adoption
- The Australian government released a national blockchain roadmap that lists a 12-step approach to help Australia progress towards “a blockchain empowered future”
- The roadmap noted that blockchain has the potential to create jobs, save companies money and improve Australia’s economic growth
- The blueprint contains plans to: 1) formalize the National Blockchain Roadmap Advisory Committee and rename it to the National Blockchain Roadmap Steering Committee; 2) establish working groups for analyzing blockchain use cases; 3) investigate options for uses cases in sectors such as agriculture, education and finance; 4) establish a group of gov’t blockchain users to discuss the learnings from existing gov’t use cases; 5) look internationally to identify examples of countries using blockchain to provide efficient gov’t services; 6) work closely with blockchain providers to engage with the Business Research and Innovation Initiative program; 7) ensure that blockchain is included in broader policy work; 8) help develop common frameworks and course content for blockchain qualifications; 9) work with Austrade on a capability development program for Australian blockchain start-ups; 10) work with Austrade to deliver a blockchain focused inbound investment program; 11) leverage existing bilateral agreements to consider pilot projects with other countries; and 12) work with relevant gov’t departments to ensure Australian businesses can connect into digital trade infrastructure
- FINMA: FinSA/FinIA—Follow-Up Regulation by FINMA
- A new provision passed by FINMA, the Swiss financial regulator, has lowered the threshold for unidentified crypto purchases from $5,114 to $1,023 CHF
- The regulator cited “heightened money-laundering risks” as the reason for lowering the threshold
- FINMA will hold a consultation on the follow-up regulation up to Apr. 9
- CoinTelegraph: Value Locked in Crypto DeFi Markets Hits $1 Billion Milestone
- According to analytics site Defipulse.com, there is now $1B in value locked in the DeFi markets
- Nearly 60% of the DeFi market is dominated by Maker
- One year ago today the value locked in DeFi was roughly a fourth of what it is today
- BTC’s lightning network accounts for 1.7% of the value ($8.5M), making it the ninth largest digital asset used for DeFi contracts & apps
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