United States regulators and lawmakers may be revisiting legislation for crypto assets following a wild week of trading that has seen Bitcoin (BTC) prices plunge by $15,000 at one point. According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, Washington’s financial regulators are still unsure of how to regulate the volatile markets. As banking regulators testified on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Federal Reserve Vice Chairman of Supervision Randal Quarles spoke of a lack of sufficient regulations, stating: “We are in the process at the Fed of studying the various ways to address this issue.” He added that federal agencies need time to …

For decades, a lack of innovation has stifled the banking sector. We still live in a world where cross-border payments can take several days, and inefficient algorithms deny loans to consumers who can afford to pay them back — all because they don’t fit inelastic requirements that aren't reflective of the 21st century. It’s been interesting to see how new concepts and key milestones in digitization have been pioneered by so-called “challenger banks.” These institutions, often fronted by fresh-faced financiers who previously worked at old-fashioned institutions, have seen how customers end up drowning in fees. As you will have seen …

Lawmakers in the U.S. state of Nebraska have taken another step towards passing a bill that will allow state banks to offer cryptocurrency services. According to a May 19 tweet from Senator Julie Slama, the legislature called LB 649 has just passed to the final round of debate. She added that the bill establishes a statewide framework for cryptocurrency and digital asset banks in Nebraska: “Excited for Nebraska to be a national leader in crypto!” As reported by Cointelegraph earlier this month, the legislature was introduced by Republican Mike Flood in January. The bill aims to adopt the Nebraska Financial …

Amid the ongoing concerns over Bitcoin’s (BTC) energy consumption, a new study states that the traditional banking system consumes much more energy than the Bitcoin network. Michael Novogratz’s cryptocurrency firm, Galaxy Digital, released a report Friday titled “On Bitcoin’s Energy Consumption: A Quantitative Approach to a Subjective Question,” providing open-source access to its methodology and calculations. Compiled by Galaxy’s mining arm, the study estimates Bitcoin’s annual electricity consumption to stand at 113.89 terawatts per hour, including energy for miner demand, miner power consumption, pool power consumption and node power consumption. This amount is at least two times lower than the …

As blockchain technology and the public's awareness of cryptocurrency continues to grow, a range of new use cases a coming to market and enhancing the efficacy of legacy financial systems. Despite its many applications, the original use case for Bitcoin (BTC) as a medium of exchange remains one of the most fundamental applications of blockchain technology and while BTC might not be the best asset to use for payments, there are service providers who have eased the process of settling transactions in other cryptocurrencies. For now, the most widely accepted way to use cryptocurrencies for direct payments in everyday life …

Teller Finance, a project building an undercollateralized lending protocol for decentralized finance, has announced the launch of its mainnet alpha stage. This will enable certain users to obtain credit without being required to post collateral, which is the case for most other DeFi lending protocols. The Teller alpha will be accessible only to holders of a special nonfungible token, called the Fortune Teller NFT. The tokens will be sold on Thursday, with half of the proceeds of the sale going to the protocol’s liquidity pools, and the remaining half will be used to fund development. Only $10 million in total …

Chinese holding conglomerate Ping An Group filed the largest number of blockchain-related patents in 2020, according to a new report. Intellectual property-focused magazine Intellectual Asset Management has released a report on the rankings of the world’s foremost blockchain patentees. Based on data from the Derwent World Patents Index, the rankings show that Ping An filed 1,215 blockchain patent families in 2020, more than Tencent and Ant Group combined. Owning a total of 1,749 blockchain patent families, Ping An sharply increased its number of patent applications in 2020, up from just 291 in 2019. Based in Shenzhen, Ping An operates a …

As multiple banks prepare crypto custody services, holders now have to flip an old Bitcoin saying on its head: are the banks prepared to be their own (and others') bank? Last week BNY Mellon, the oldest bank in the United States, announced they would be providing custody solutions, ceding to pressure from institutional investors. Likewise, documents from December indicate that Deutsche Bank is also planning a custody solution, along with trading and token issuance services. However, while both banks are well-established and have experience handling a wide range of assets, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re prepared for crypto custody. “Digital …

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency has granted another crypto firm a national charter. Per an announcement shared with Cointelegraph today, Washington-based institutional crypto custodian Protego is the second crypto-native firm to get national licensing from the OCC. The new charter is conditional, and Protego is authorized as a national trust bank rather than a traditional bank, meaning that it will not handle deposits. Interestingly, Protego is a relatively new firm and is still in the process of organizing. It will have 18 months to launch operations before the current charter expires. The OCC is the office of …

Decentralized finance is a form of finance that does not require traditional intermediaries such as banks, brokerages or exchanges. All of the work that would normally be handled by these institutions is instead performed by technological solutions including smart contracts and blockchain. The legacy banking system and DeFi are markedly different. While traditional finance is slow to develop and adapt, in just a few years, companies operating in the DeFi sector have built a parallel financial system from the ground up. There are payment systems, lending protocols, exchanges and more. There is also a growing stablecoins market of fiat-pegged assets …

Editor's note It may be too late for resolutions and too early for Lent, but lacking any discrete occasion, I would still like to give up United States political news for a while, or at least for the duration of one Law Decoded. Fortunately, in the spirit of going international and leaving the bonkers election cycle of the U.S., blockchain technology and stablecoins are playing a major role in the latest developments in cross-border payments and settlements. It’s long been one of the most talked-about applications of blockchain technology. Diplomatic scheming shows up in payments by regular folks in the …

According to the Wall Street Journal, a former member of Ripple’s board of advisors directors is likely to become the next Comptroller of the Currency. The report cites insiders “familiar with the matter” who expect President Biden to nominate former Treasury Department official, Michael Barr, to the top post overseeing national banks. The position as Comptroller of the Currency serves as the administrator of the federal banking system, and is the chief officer of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The WSJ described it as one of the most powerful banking regulators: “The comptroller oversees hundreds of …