This week’s headlines from Japan included one of country's leaders describing Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto's dream as meaningful, LayerX Labs collaborating with a Japanese university for blockchain research, the FINSUM blockchain conference hosts notable discussion on security tokens offerings, and the head of Monex Group saying Japan is falling behind the U.S. on STOs. Check out some of this week’s crypto and blockchain headlines, originally reported by Cointelegraph Japan. Japanese Financial Services Agency head describes Bitcoin as impactful At the end of Tokyo's 2020 Blockchain Global Governance Conference, or BG2C, also called FINSUM, Ryozo Himino, the secretary of Japan's Financial …

Mexico’s Financial Intelligence Unit recently published the results of its second National Risk Assessment. The report highlighted that the risk of money laundering in the banking sector far surpasses the issues encountered by fintech companies. According to El Economista, the so-called “G7 banking” group – BBVA, Santander, Citibanamex, Banorte, HSBC, Scotiabank, and Inbursa – registers significantly more money laundering in Mexico than Blockchain firms. Brokerage companies, exchange firms, and banking institutional providers are also included in the “high risk” classification given by the report. Although the fintech sector is still a possible propagator of both money laundering and the financing …

The United Kingdom Competition and Markets Authority, has given the go-ahead to Visa’s acquisition of fintech startup Plaid following a Phase 1 review. According to an Aug. 24 announcement, the CMA investigated several ways in which the deal could potentially harm competition, but ultimately found no evidence that this outcome was likely. Plaid offers a platform enabling apps to connect to a user's bank accounts. In the U.K. it offers payment initiation services (PIS), which allow direct real-time payments to be made via merchant websites, without use of credit or debit cards. The CMA focused on whether this deal could …

Central bank digital currencies are a digital representation of a country’s fiat currency. They are effectively a government-issued cryptocurrency designed to replace the traditional, physical form of fiat currencies. The term CBDC is broad because its implementation involves several critical decisions on the part of an issuing central bank. The primary decision is whether a CBDC should be a general-purpose in that it’s available to be used by the general population. If not, then the issuing authority may decide to make it available for “wholesale” transactions, which means the CBDC is only used for settlements between banks. Finally, a CBDC …

Blockchain firm Apollo Fintech has announced the completion of its National Payment Platform, or NPP on August 12. This new blockchain platform is a cashless system that supposedly enables a central bank to issue central bank digital currency for national adoption. The NPP system reportedly allows a government agency and central bank to onboard commercial banks and agents after CBDC is issued. It will include features such as SMS, QR codes, cards and offline codes on a mobile application that allows individuals and merchants to transact in a hypothetical CBDC. CEO of Apollo Fintech Stephen McCullah said, "[NPP] allows economic …

Yam finance (YAM), the latest fad in the crypto space, recently warned the public of a technical bug affecting the ecosystem. "We have found a bug in the rebasing contract," the project said in an Aug. 12 tweet. "All funds in staking contract are safe, as this is an unrelated part of the protocol," the project added, also noting participants' Yam token holdings remain unaltered. As the decentralized finance, or DeFi, crypto boom continues, something called yield farming has come into the spotlight. Yield farming is essentially the latest passive income fad in crypto. Yam has risen to the top …

A new video takes viewers through German financial technology company Wirecard’s journey from being one of the top businesses in the world to one who’s shares plummeted by more than 98% before filing for insolvency. In an Aug. 6 video posted to YouTube by ColdFusion, Australian host Dagogo Altraide retells the story of how the Wirecard scandal began when auditors were unable to locate more than $2 billion that was supposed to be sitting in the FinTech firm’s Philippines-based accounts. The Wirecard board later admitted that the funds likely did not exist. “This was a tale of liars, accounting manipulation, …

The Kyber Network, a decentralized, on-chain cryptocurrency exchange, has just listed the Ethereum-compatible pLTC token — a new cross-chain token developed by pTokens project. Announcing the news to Cointelegraph on Aug. 3, Kyber Network said that pLTC tokens will be accessible through KyberSwap and other decentralized apps, or DApps. They will also be available on platforms powered by Kyber’s on-chain liquidity protocol. pLTC is pegged to Litecoin The news comes shortly after pTokens launched pLTC token on the Ethereum mainnet on July 29. Similar to other “pTokens”, pLTC token aims to unlock cross-chain decentralized finance, or DeFi, liquidity by connecting …

The People's Bank of China has officially added Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province, to the list of regions carrying out fintech innovation supervision pilots, according to local news on July 20. Industry insiders believe that Chengdu's official approval will further accelerate fintech innovation and actively help Chengdu build a regional fintech center with international influence. The city is reportedly focusing on big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain technologies. It is accelerating the construction of local financial regulatory sandboxes to enhance local financial regulatory capabilities and service levels. Fintech and regulation Fintech innovation supervision is also called …

Jan Marsalek, the former chief operations officer of Wirecard who went missing after his supposed trip to the Philippines last month to chase the missing 2 billion Euro in the company’s books, has been located in Belarus. Marsalek reportedly entered the Philippines via Manila before flying to Cebu City and then to China in June. Philippine authorities said there was no footage of Marsalek arriving in the city nor were there records of a flight leaving Cebu for China. Forged traveling tracks According to investigative reporting website Bellingcat, the former Wirecard executive’s trip to the Philippines was forged. Investigations have …

Thomas Lambert, Daniel Liebau, and Peter Roosenboom from the Rotterdam School of Management suggest that Security Token Offerings are better at financing start-ups than Initial Coin Offerings. Their research was published on July 14 via the University of Oxford Business Law blog. The research paper pointed out that although ICOs and STOs are both issued on distributed ledgers, the idea behind an ICO is “value creation for a community. Utility tokens in ICOs can only grant holders with consumptive rights on services or products and can not be seen as a “financing mechanism”. However, STOs can. Researchers explained that: “Tokens …

Wirecard’s recently-prosecuted former Chief Operations Officer, Jan Marsalek, may have had ties to Russian intelligence services. He also allegedly held secret documents about the use of a Russian chemical weapon in the U.K. According to the Financial Times, the former Wirecard executive bragged of his intelligence services’ ties in an effort to further integrate with London traders. Recovered documents contain specific data on the formula for the world’s deadliest nerve agent, known as Novichok. The chemical weapon was used in the poisoning of a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Julia on March 4, 2018. Germany on the …