Coming every Sunday, the Hodler’s Digest will help you to track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions, and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link. Top Stories This Week Investment Giant Fidelity Launches Digital Assets Service U.S. investment firm Fidelity has launched a digital assets service targeting institutional clients this week. The new company, Fidelity Digital Asset Services, will offer custody and trade execution services for digital assets, looking towards hedge funds, family offices, and market intermediaries as clients. In the announcement …

Consumers in Dubai will soon be able to use digital currency to pay for goods, services, and utilities following a new government partnership, a press release confirms Tuesday, Oct. 9. The deal between emcredit, a subsidiary of the Dubai Department of Economic Development, blockchain payment provider Pundi X, and its partner Ebooc Fintech & Loyalty Labs LLC will facilitate point of sale (PoS) payments in emcredit’s emcash currency. Ebooc will provide PoS terminals for in-store payments, while Pundi X plans to roll out 100,000 units globally over the next three years, the press release notes. Emcash is pegged to the …

Mongolia’s largest mobile telecoms operator has become the country’s first licensed entity to issue its own digital currency. This is according to a report by the official state media outlet Montsame Friday, September 28. Mobicom’s financial arm Mobifinance is now clear to issue the e-currency, dubbed “Candy,” to investors, Montsame confirms. The executives have received formal permission at a ceremonial event at the Bank of Mongolia’s headquarters Friday. Commenting on the achievement, which comes around five months after the central bank approved formal digital currency regulation, Mobicom CEO Tatsuya Hamada appeared highly bullish on the phenomenon’s future role in the …

The Bank of Thailand (BoT) has revealed plans to develop a wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that will use R3’s Corda platform, in a press release published August 21. A CBDC is a digital currency issued by a central bank whose legal tender status depends on government regulation or law. The “wholesale” variant of CBDC limits its use to financial institutions and markets, as opposed to a “retail CBDC” for the general public. R3’s Corda, for its part, is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform that has been designed to work within the financial service sector and uses a …

The German Federal Ministry of Finance considers the concept of a central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC) to be too risky to implement, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch reported July 5. The finance ministry expressed its position in response to an inquiry by Green Party MP Gerhard Schick published business newspaper Handelsblatt Wednesday, July 4. "So far there are no convincing reasons for issuing digital central bank money for a wide range of users in Germany and the Eurozone," Handelsblatt quoted the Ministry as saying. The potential benefits of a central bank-issued digital currency –– including high-speed bank transfers –– could also be …

The cryptocurrency Dash has made waves over the past months as the price has continued to increase. A new win for the currency has come from a partnership with CoinBR, a Brazilian cryptocurrency company. The connection is a particular win for Dash, as the cryptocurrency, through the CoinBR platform, is now able to be used throughout the country at more than 13,000 locations that support the CoinBR platform. The announcement was made via Twitter: A CoinBR é a plataforma brasileira ~real/oficial~ que disponibiliza Dash aos seus usuários. — COINBR (@coinbrnet) July 6, 2017 Dash expansion The Dash network has been …

Since its first big spike in growth and subsequent plummet with the Mt. Gox hack, Bitcoin has been labeled a bubble waiting to burst. People have likened its growth to many different bubbles, most notably the dotcom boom in the 1990s. However, the truth of the matter is that Bitcoin keeps breaking barriers as it reached another all time high this week. In fact, a closer inspection of the growth, and the eventual burst of the associated bubbles shows that Bitcoin is so far off the charts that it looks like an absolute outlier. An age of digital currencies This …

What is a payment transfer system? It’s a payment method between individuals. Say you live abroad and you want to transfer some money back home, also known as remittances; or you want to lend some money to your friend who is in a different city, or any other reason, involving transferring money. What do you do? This is when a payment transfer system comes in handy. There are different ways to do this, from a ‘money wiring office’, to your laptop. Of course, you’ll need to provide contact information about yourself and about the person you’re sending money to: names, …

The number of Blockchain technology and digital currency-related applications that were filed with and published by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) between January and July 2017 has almost doubled. Based on data from the agency, there were 390 applications filed during the period, up by 90 percent from the 204 applications in the same period in 2016. In the conducted analysis, the dataset includes combined keyword search results using such terms as “distributed ledger,” “Bitcoin,” “Blockchain,” and “Ethereum.” Based on the results, there is currently a boom in research and development (R&D) focusing on Blockchain technology and digital …

Bankers continue to come from traditional financial roles to Blockchain related projects. Leaving behind them a salary of up to seven figures shows a strong belief in the future of digital currencies. The lure of a young but quickly maturing marketplace is growing stronger. From somewhat ‘early adopters’ like former JP Morgan executive Blythe Masters - known for her prodigy climb and creating the modern credit default swap - became CEO of Digital Asset Holdings. Cointelegraph recently covered former Morgan Stanley’s top man venturing into cryptocurrency. One time Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack seeks to launch his own ICO for …

In the early hours of Saturday, IOTA advanced as much as 41.32 percent and moved up one place in the rankings. In the process, it made a casualty of privacy-centric Dash to become the number seven digital currency. The swelling pushed IOTA's market value to more than $1.7 bln. Veritably, this marked the second time the business-to-business token is overtaking Dash in the rankings. It will be recalled that barely two weeks ago when IOTA, in an extraordinary move, entered the elite zone. Dash was one of the three entities it shoved aside. Will Dash fight back? Given the resiliency …

Last weekend, leading experts of the Blockchain industry got together at Coinsbank networking event on the Turkish Riviera to discuss current issues in the sector. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Ronny Boesing, CEO of Coinsbank, described the event as a platform which was designed to connect people with the aim of changing the world with the Blockchain. The theme for this year’s Blockchain Party was “by connecting people bringing Blockchain tech to mainstream adoption.” Attendees from the US, UK, Finland, Germany, India, Latvia, Ukraine, Argentina, Russia, Serbia and Turkey were trying to answer one very tricky question: “What are the ways to …