Arak Sutivong, CEO of SCB 10X and the president of Siam Commercial Bank (SCB), has offered an insight into how one of the largest venture capital funds in Southeast Asia views the future of decentralized finance (DeFi) when it comes to the contentious question of regulation. SCB 10X is the venture arm of SCB, Thailand's oldest bank, and mostly focuses on investing in blockchain-based financial services, such as DeFi and digital assets. In his opening speech at SCB 10X’s second annual global DeFi virtual summit, REDeFiNE, Sutivong stressed that by now, DeFi had broken through to the mainstream “by many …

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, or ECLAC, a United Nations’ regional commission to encourage economic cooperation, is the latest regulator to raise concerns about El Salvador’s decision to accept Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender. ECLAC executive secretary Alicia Bárcena has warned that El Salvador’s Bitcoin move poses a number of systemic risks as well as risks related to money laundering, local news agency Diario El Mundo reported Friday. Bárcena emphasized that there is no study yet that would have investigated potential risks or benefits of El Salvador accepting BTC as legal tender. She expressed confidence that …

A business unit within Malta’s Chamber of Commerce has struck down allegations that the country failed to uphold proper regulatory oversight of cryptocurrency businesses in its early embrace of the industry in 2017 and 2018. The Virtual Financial Assets Agents Business Unit of the Malta Chamber of Commerce responded to a Sunday report from the Times of Malta alleging that global financial regulators are concerned about money laundering and lax regulatory oversight of crypto businesses within the country. Specifically, sources close to a recent Financial Action Task Force meeting in Paris told the daily newspaper that regulators believe Malta’s fast-tracking …

Malta’s strategy to become a global enclave for digital assets appears to be working, though lax regulatory oversight has raised concerns over money laundering and other financial crime. Roughly $71 billion, or 60 billion euros, worth of cryptocurrencies has passed through Malta since the tiny Mediterranean state first adopted its “blockchain island” strategy in 2017, the Times of Malta reported Sunday. Although Malta has upgraded its crypto-focused regulations in recent years, financial watchdogs say the nation's anti-money laundering regime may have lacked proper protocols. The Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, met in Paris last week to discuss whether Malta …

With extreme positions on both sides, some would have us believe that decentralized technology and regulation are mutually exclusive. As pervasive as that narrative has become, a more evolved view is that both decentralization and regulation are inevitable, so the best results will flow with regulators and innovators coming together. But what will that cooperation look like? At the Stellar Development Foundation, our view is that regulators and innovators will (and should) influence each other, and that means both sides should be prepared to compromise. Let’s start with some honest self-reflection: There is no inherent quality of blockchain or cryptocurrency …

Individuals have different choices when it comes to storing their cryptocurrencies. They can use a hosted wallet (sometimes called a custodial wallet), which involves an intermediary (a host) that usually receives, stores and transmits the assets on behalf of their clients. For example, a centralized crypto exchange can be a hosted wallet provider, with which an individual sets up an account/wallet. In such cases, the value stored belongs to the account holder, but the funds are controlled by the wallet provider/host (pursuant to the contractual arrangement and instructions from the client). Alternatively, cryptocurrencies can be stored in an unhosted wallet …

The decentralized finance, or DeFi, space exploded over the last year, with a total value locked in DeFi of around $90 billion, according to DeBank. The DeFi ecosystem includes projects like Maker, Aave, Compound, Uniswap and more, with new ones rapidly emerging. DeFi is a broad concept to describe an emerging area of finance built using decentralized technological tools and characterized by being open, permissionless, disintermediated and with no single point of failure. The spectrum of DeFi is broad, and the exact degree and mixture of various technological and governance features determine how decentralized a particular DeFi project is, or …

Cryptocurrency exchange platform and card issuer Crypto.com will be providing liquidity in a new partnership with Singapore-based hybrid liquidity aggregator Finxflo. In an announcement on Tuesday, Crypto.com said it would be joining Finxflo as the firm’s first liquidity provider, reportedly allowing the exchange to increase its transaction volume and mitigate market volatility. In general, liquidity aggregators may allow crypto traders to take advantage of deeper liquidity pools and more advantageous price execution. “We want to eliminate the hurdles associated with crypto trading, and streamline the experience for new retail investors,” said Finxflo CEO James Gillingham. “As we continue to deepen …

How does blockchain analytics software work for financial institutions exposed to crypto? They enable transactions to be monitored on all major blockchains — 24/7 and in real time. The risk associated with incoming and outgoing transactions can be determined — covering high value payments, transfers involving multiple digital assets and/or accounts, as well as transactions that appear to have no logical business explanation. A clearer picture can also be gathered over time by piecing together intelligence from entities making frequent transfers over a specific timeframe. Compliance software companies like Crystal Blockchain enable suspicious patterns to be detected, and for financial …

Crypto-focused lobbying groups in Washington, DC are playing an increasingly vital role in reorienting policymakers away from the view that digital currencies are used primarily for illegal transactions. Now, they are preparing for, potentially, their biggest battle yet. The Blockchain Association, an industry trade group representing crypto firms, has added 10 members to its brass since December 2020, bringing its total to 34. Kristin Smith, the group’s executive director, told Bloomberg that the association's members are extremely concerned about federal regulators clamping down on the industry over misplaced fears. “We in the industry think it’s hugely problematic,” she said, adding …

Japan has made another step toward adopting cryptocurrency Anti-Money Laundering regulations developed by the Financial Action Task Force, Cointelegraph Japan reports. The Japanese Financial Services Agency announced Wednesday that it will adopt the FATF’s Travel Rule — a set of regulations requiring virtual asset service providers to share transaction data for senders and recipients — by April 2022. “It is required to introduce and implement the Travel Rule regulations in each country,” the FSA noted. The FSA requested the Japanese Virtual Currency Exchange Association, a local self-regulatory crypto organization, to prepare for the implementation of the Travel Rule: “From the …

From real-name account trading to investigating individuals using cryptocurrencies to evade taxes, government officials in South Korea are enacting stricter regulations to oversee the cryptocurrency industry in the country. These measures often require digital currency businesses to provide detailed customer data and transaction information to the relevant authorities. With these stringent measures often comes an increase in the cost of compliance for exchanges and other crypto service providers. Privacy concerns are another issue amid the swath of information being provided to government agencies. However, this strict regulatory climate has done little to dampen the enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies in South Korea. …