Per a July 2 announcement, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are opening up virtual hours for industry players looking to discuss innovation and new technologies in banking. More venues for crypto to meet with regulators The new meetings will be capped at one hour in length and are currently slated for just two days, July 29-30. Those interested need to register by July 17. Depending on the success of these meetings, they may become a more regular feature. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s FinHub recently announced virtual meetups to …

SBI Financial Services, a subsidiary of Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings, has bought a $30 million minority stake in British crypto liquidity startup, B2C2. The investment marks the beginning of a strategic partnership between the firms as B2C2 is set to become SBI’s main liquidity provider. As announced on July 1, the collaboration is aimed to expand SBI’s crypto offering to millions of customers. B2C2 is intended to benefit from SBI’s distribution network as the London-based startup launches an electronic prime brokerage. A spokesperson at B2C2 told Cointelegraph that the investment is “one of the largest in the digital asset …

SIA, a European payment services business, and U.K.-based technology company Quant Network successfully tested cross-blockchain interoperability between different protocols, SIA said. SIA and Quant Network first announced their partnership on June 5. Their aim is to work on cross-platform applications and services for banks and financial institutions. The partnership aims to integrate Quant Network’s blockchain operating system Overledger into SIA’s SIAchain infrastructure and enable interoperability. It hopes to bring solutions to challenges that financial institutions are facing with blockchain integration. Both firms were able to integrate Overledger technology within SIAchain and bridge permissioned blockchain activities. SIA said this allows for …

In the past year, three major financial oversight bodies have voiced concerns about threats to financial stability purported to be posed by stablecoins. While acknowledging the potential for enhanced payments efficiency, reports from the Bank for International Settlements, the United States Federal Reserve and, most recently, from the Financial Stability Board all emphasize numerous risks under the banner of “financial stability.” The concern is with global stablecoins, which the FSB defines as having “potential reach and adoption across multiple jurisdictions and the potential to achieve substantial volume.” The FSB report included a glossary of definitions for key terms, although none …

The repeal of a blanket ban on cryptocurrencies in March by India’s central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, has been a boon to the thriving crypto industry in India — with the launch of new exchanges being a catalyst. This is despite the country being one of the most severely affected nations by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to a deepening economic crisis across the nation. For investors and fintech innovators alike, cryptocurrency and blockchain technology have proven to be a much-needed respite in these challenging times. Regulatory uncertainty Repealing the blanket ban was not the ultimate solution …

Thai authorities are ramping up their efforts to crack down on the country’s drug networks and the ruses they use to launder their multi-million dollar turnovers — including cryptocurrency. AFP News reported on June 26 that the recent downfall of one meth syndicate — itself allegedly responsible for laundering tens of millions of dollars of narco profits via gold dealers, oil and the construction industry — has cast a spotlight on the "scale and sophistication” of such networks. Lieutenant-General Wissanu Prasarttong-Osoth — assistant to Thailand's police chief — has conceded “it's impossible to guess the real amount these drug networks …

There’s a revolution happening. We’re moving toward a world with a massive reduction in trust in centralized institutions and ways of doing things. There are several concurrent shifts happening right now, including a shift away from centralized governing bodies — encompassing a lack of trust in middlemen, governments and even the authority figures hired to keep us safe — as well as a loss of trust in social media platforms, which are now more aggressively censoring content. The second is a shift from the old financial world into a new, 24/7 digital economy, in which individuals are empowered to control …

In advance of its coming annual report, on June 24 the Bank for International Settlements released a special chapter from that report on digital payments — especially central bank digital currencies, a topic that’s attracted tremendous interest in recent months. The report encourages central banks to treat CBDCs as their future, saying: “One option at the frontier of policy opportunities is the issuance of CBDCs, which could amount to a sea change.” A recent shift in favor of CBDCs The BIS found that there had been a major bullish shift in sentiment for CBDCs since the beginning of this year …

Central bank digital currencies continue to be a popular topic of discussion within the crypto and broader financial circle, with China often dominating the headlines owing to the progress of its planned digital yuan project. On June 22, a former central bank senior official revealed that the country had completed the backend infrastructure for its planned CBDC. While China’s proposed digital currency electronic payment, or DCEP, system has been some time in the making, the emergence of Facebook’s Libra in 2019 reportedly triggered an accelerated developmental path. Indeed, Libra’s original plan for a token backed by a basket of fiat …

The Italian Banking Association (ABI) has revealed it would be willing to support the implementation of a digital currency from the European Central Bank. According to a June 18 update on the ABI website, the association had approved guidelines governing its position on digital currency and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The ABI—representing a group of banks in Italy—stated it was ready to “participate in projects and experiments regarding a digital currency from the European Central Bank [...] to speed up the implementation of a European-level initiative.” “Digital money needs to be fully trusted by citizens. To this end, it …

As countries around the world dive into central bank digital currencies (CBDC), many in the crypto industry look forward to what that means for adoption and even lucrative partnerships to develop such tokens. However, at least some commentators have noted that national CBDCs will likely disappoint those looking to update monetary policy. “A change in packaging” Speaking to Cointelegraph, Ido Sadeh Man and Barry Topf — respectively the founder and chief economist of Saga, a global stablecoin project — cautioned against the wave of optimism surrounding CBDCs. “It’s basically a change in packaging, a change in technology. A welcome change,” …

The Bank of Thailand announced that it plans to develop a prototype to test real-life business use cases of its central bank digital currency (CBDC). The bank said in its official statement that before it launches the CBDC payment system for all businesses, it plans to test it with large-scale enterprises. They have partnered with the largest cement and building material provider in Thailand, Siam Cement Group (SCG), and Thailand-based fintech firm Digital Ventures Company Limited to pilot test their payment prototype system. The project is scheduled to start in July 2020 and the pilot test with SCG is expected …