Bitcoin (BTC) starts a new week still looking for $11,000 support as macro markets wobble over coronavirus and banks’ criminal activities. Cointelegraph highlights five factors that could shape BTC price action in the coming days. Banks face money laundering deluge While central banks grappled with dramatic shifts in United States economy policy, fresh leaked files showed yet more evidence of largescale money laundering. A huge trove of documents from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), dubbed the FinCEN Files, found its way to investigative journalists throughout the world this month, and the focus was clear: illegal activities gone unnoticed. One …

The Libra Association has appointed HSBC veteran James Emmett as managing director of its subsidiary firm, Libra Networks LLC. James Emmet spent 25 years at HSBC and is a former colleague of the Libra Association’s new CEO, former HSBC chief legal officer Stuart Levey. Levey is also the former Under Secretary for Terrorism under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama Emmett has held multiple roles in his long career at HSBC, most recently working as group general manager. In an official statement, Levey underscored Emmett’s extensive experience as a financial services executive “with deep substantive expertise and …

The Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong, a major local alliance promoting crypto awareness and education, is launching the “Bitcoin Tram” ad campaign in Hong Kong; one of the world’s main global financial centres. According to a Sept. 11 announcement, the new ad campaign composes three double-decker trams fully covered with Bitcoin logos and ads alongside 20 similarly-designed billboards across the city. Hong Kong’s Bitcoin Association said in the announcement that the “educational campaign” was initiated by the Hong Kong Bitcoin community and is coordinated by the association. The campaign is financed with donations from the community, the non-profit added. A …

Singapore Exchange (SGX), a major investment holding company in Singapore, has issued its first digital bond powered by blockchain technology. As officially announced on Sept. 1, SGX deployed its digital asset issuance platform to conduct a 400 million Singapore dollar ($294 million) 5.5-year public bond issuance for major local food and agri-business company, Olam International. Focused on Asia bond markets, the new digital bond was enabled by cooperation with SGX’s established blockchain partners like HSBC Singapore and investment firm Temasek. As part of the joint initiative, HSBC provided its on-chain payments solution allowing instant settlement in multiple currencies to handle …

Major international banks like Credit Suisse and HSBC are reportedly scrutinizing their Hong Kong clients amid the ongoing protests over China-backed national security law. According to a July 19 report by Reuters, global banks including Credit Suisse, HSBC, Julius Baer, and UBS are now screening their clients in Hong Kong on potential ties to the city’s pro-democracy movement. Social media spies Citing a group of anonymous people familiar with the matter, the report says that the banks are scanning clients’ records for political and government ties in order to impose additional diligence requirements. The records include comments made by clients …

Singapore-based multinational banking firm DBS Bank has joined the blockchain trade-finance network Contour, which is built over R3’s Corda. Contour is due for a main-launch later this year. According to a May 11 report by the business news outlet The Business Times, DBS Bank is the first bank from Singapore to join the network. Major institutions such as BNP Paribas, Bangkok Bank, ING, HSBC, Standard Chartered and Citi Ventures founded Contour. Digitizing for efficiency DBS looks forward to digitizing its end-to-end letters of credit settlement process through the platform’s blockchain solutions. The bank aims to reduce settlement time, decrease the …

A blockchain trade finance platform developed by eight major banks, among them HSBC, BNP Paribas, and Citi, is now ready for commercial launch in Singapore in Q2 2020. Named Contour, the launch follows a successful trial of the platform involving over $30 million in letter-of-credit transactions last year, South China Morning Post reported on March 5. Letter-of-credit transactions are a payment mechanism widely used in international trade, in which a bank provides a seller with an economic guarantee for a buyer’s payment. As the coronavirus continues to shake global markets, a regional executive told reporters that the platform can ensure …

Coming every Sunday, Hodler’s Digest will help you 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 Bitcoin grapples with $10,000 — two scenarios for the week ahead Bears got their pound of flesh this week when Bitcoin prices tumbled by $800 in an hour. The crash led to significant losses across most altcoins, too. Looking ahead to the coming days, Cointelegraph’s Keith Wareing says BTC is in the early stages of …

In an earnings call held on Tuesday, Feb. 18, an HSBC executive revealed the bank plans to cut 35,000 jobs by the end of 2022 and invest more in digital systems. The plan for HSBC in the next three years is to cut down on staff and branches and simplify the operation by investing in technology. Noel Quinn, group chief executive added in the earnings call that: “In Retail Banking, we will expand our products offering and increase our investment in digital. We'll refocus our Retail Banking presence to serve globally mobile clients, reducing our branch network in the US …

One of the financial hubs of the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is continuing to expand blockchain-driven developments. The Department of Economic Development (DED) of Dubai has established a Know Your Customer (KYC) blockchain consortium with six major banks. Dubbed “KYC Blockchain Consortium,” the new blockchain-powered regulatory platform is designed to accelerate processes like exchange of digital customer data and documents while ensuring security. The project also intends to bring a unified platform of KYC efforts among existing and future ecosystem members like qualified financial institutions and licensing authorities. UAE’s first KYC blockchain platform to launch in Q1 …

British banking giant HSBC plans to move $20 billion worth of assets to Digital Vault, a new blockchain-based custody platform by March 2020. By deploying the platform, the global investment bank aims to digitize paper-based records of private placements in order to increase standardization and speed up processes in the growing industry, Reuters reports Nov. 27. HSBC reportedly expects the global volumes of private placements to surge 60% from 2017 to hit $7.7 trillion by 2022. The bank could not estimate how much the platform will save for the company or its clients, Reuters states. HSBC to help investors track …

The need for censorship-resistant currencies like Bitcoin (BTC) has been thrown, yet again, into stark relief as HSBC shutters an account reportedly used to fund Hong Kong protestors. As the Hong Kong Economic Journal reported on Nov. 18, the British multinational bank recently closed a corporate account that was reportedly being used to transfer crowdsourced funds to support protestors’ activities. HSBC says closure a matter of “regular review” Five months into the Hong Kong protests — now reaching an increasingly violent fever pitch — the bank presented its decision as a formal procedure, stating that it found the account was …