The Treasury Department of the United Kingdom has revealed it is drafting proposals to regulate private stablecoins while also researching central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, as an alternative to cash. In an announcement published on Nov. 9, U.K. Treasury Chancellor Rishi Sunak noted the forthcoming regulatory proposals alongside other goals for the country’s financial services industry — including a review of the U.K.’s listings regime and support for green finance. “New technologies such as stablecoins — privately-issued digital currencies — could transform the way people store and exchange their money, making payments cheaper and faster.” The news comes amid …
Simplex, a crypto-to-fiat payments provider, is adding another fiat offramp to enable its partner exchanges like Binance and Huob to sell major stablecoin Tether (USDT) to the euro. According to an Oct. 29 announcement, Simplex has rolled out new Tether (USDT) offramps across its partner network including major exchanges like Binance, OKEx and Huobi. A Simplex representative told Cointelegraph that the latest development marks the first time when the sell option is enabled for Tether on Simplex, stating: “USDT has been available to purchase through our partner network for a while but ‘cashing out’ and selling directly in this currency …
Australia’s crypto-friendly capital-raising platform Stax has announced its client West Coast Aquaculture Group, or WCA, will be conducting the country’s first initial public offering that accepts virtual currency as payment. Investors participating in WCA’s offering can purchase equity in the company using Tether (USDT) or Australian dollars. USDT was chosen over Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) due to its price stability. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Stax CEO Kenny Lee emphasized that stablecoins offer the benefits of cryptocurrency without the volatility of other digital assets: “The acceptance of USDT in an IPO is a transformative move in Australia and a significant step …
According to an Oct. 28 announcement from Avanti, The Wyoming State Banking Board voted 8-0 to grant the financial institution a bank charter. The approval will allow Avanti to operate the new crypto-friendly bank under the name Avanti Bank & Trust as well as its “tokenized U.S. dollar” Avit, designed to modernize USD payments. Avanti said it planned to open for customers in early 2021, but will be limited to high minimum balance accounts. Retail clients will have to wait. "Avanti's process from company formation to application to charter is lightning fast," founder and CEO Caitlin Long told Cointelegraph. "Typically …
According to tech evangelists Don and Alex Tapscott, blockchain technology will prove itself the most disruptive technology of the next decade. “We now have an Internet of value that can give us another opportunity to rewrite the economic power grid and the old social order”, said Don Tapscott. However, Tapscott senior underlines that it will take a while to transform established, multi-trillion dollars industries, such as the supply chain and financial transaction sphere. Even so, Alex Tapscott pointed out that successful blockchain use cases are already gaining traction. For instance, he mentioned that stablecoins are already having a significant impact …
China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), published a draft law this Friday that aims to provide regulatory framework and legitimacy for a forthcoming central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan. The draft law states that the yuan is the official currency of the People's Republic of China whether in physical or digital form. The draft law also appears to take aim at third-party efforts at yuan-backed digital currencies, stating that individuals and institutions are prohibited from making and issuing a currency designed to “replace” digital yuan circulation. This move would presumably criminalize all non-state-sanctioned yuan-backed stablecoins. …
In the days preceding Bitcoin’s latest rise in price, stablecoins went wild, exhibiting some largely unprecedented behavior. On October 18, stablecoins moving to exchanges reached record highs of 60,000 and 56,000 respectively, according to data from CryptoQuant. The outlet's data tracked USDT on Ethereum, PAX, USDC, TUSD, DAI, SAI, BUSD, HUSD and USDK. When it comes to the total inflow of all stablecoins in terms of the dollar value, no extraordinary trends were detected. CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju told Cointelegraph that, although the inflows were not huge in terms of dollar value, they signified a bullish trend among retail …
Decentralized finance’s explosive third quarter brought significant growth to stablecoins compatible with Ethereum (ETH). According to crypto market data aggregator Messari, the supply of MakerDAO’s Dai stablecoin grew by 623% in Q3 2020, pushing the token’s value above $1 for four consecutive months. Since starting July with a market cap of nearly $130 million, Dai’s supply has expanded to more than $940 million today. Dai is created when Ether holders deposit their ETH into the MakerDAO protocol, allowing them to create the stablecoin and using Ether as collateral. As an ERC-20 token, Dai can then be used on the Ethereum …
On Oct. 14, Wilshire Phoenix investment firm released its Efficient Price Discovery report, which detailed how CME Bitcoin (BTC) futures impact Bitcoin price discovery. The firm concluded that "CME Bitcoin futures contribute more to price discovery than its related spot markets." And the researchers also suggested that: "CME Bitcoin futures have grown to become significant, this is not only demonstrated through trading volume and open interest, but also by influence on spot price formation." Wilshire's analysis correctly states that price discovery in traditional markets is a contested topic. The report also adds that studies on price formation often find that …
In cryptoland, the fall tends to be regulators’ open season. As unprecedented as it’s been, 2020 is no exception to this trend. Tensions are high on both sides of the Atlantic: As markets were still processing the news of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission cracking down on derivatives exchange platform BitMEX, the Financial Conduct Authority, the British financial watchdog, moved to ban retail investors from using cryptocurrency derivatives altogether. The densely packed news cycle has somewhat muffled the impact of another regulatory bomb that dropped a week earlier and is bound to have major lasting effects on the …
Despite this year’s uncertainty that has plagued the global economy, 2020 will go down as the year of the stablecoins due to the digital sector’s tremendous growth, with new developments emerging across the board. While some attribute this growth to the booming interest in decentralized finance among crypto enthusiasts, others see it as a bullish trend that confirms the inflow of fiat currency to the crypto ecosystem. As the DeFi sector keeps growing, so too does the popularity of stablecoins, used to gain high returns from various decentralized lending projects. Stablecoins are also useful for their ability to bridge the …
Editor’s note Blockchain technology has attracted regulatory attention since its inception. The security of the Bitcoin network despite the value of BTC in play has consistently proved the resilience of blockchain technology in maintaining records across a vast range of parties. However, many countries have determined that Bitcoin doesn’t behave as a currency at all, or at least not a replacement for their own. The nations behind the world’s most-used fiat currencies have in many cases pointed to Bitcoin’s volatility as a critical flaw. They have decided that the rise of stablecoins, especially over the past two years, poses a …