Disclaimer: This article is being updated all day long. All timestamps are in the UTC time zone, with updates in reverse order (the latest update is placed at the top). This year’s World Economic Forum marks the first in-person event since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cointelegraph’s team is on the ground in Davos, Switzerland to bring in the latest updates from one of the most significant global events of the year. The topics of discussion among world leaders include blockchain technology, the role of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), Web3 and nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Don’t forget to check …

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) is scheduled to take place from May 22–26, marking the first in-person WEF global leadership event since the pandemic began. The annual meeting was first scheduled for January but was later turned into a virtual event in light of growing COVID-19 infections during the winter. The Davos Agenda 2022 virtual event, which took place from January 17–21, 2022, saw major world leaders appeal for cooperation in tackling major global socioeconomic issues. Discussions during the virtual event revolved around global economic recovery, climate action, technological innovation and global collaboration. A total of …

Sheila Warren, the head of blockchain and distributed ledger technology at the World Economic Forum, will be assuming the position of chief executive officer of the Crypto Council for Innovation, or CCI, starting in February. In a Monday announcement, the CCI said that beginning on Feb. 2, Warren would lead the alliance of crypto-friendly firms aimed at supporting lawmakers on crypto and blockchain regulation. CCI board member and Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam cited the WEF executive’s “in-depth knowledge of crypto” in addition to her experience working with governments across the globe. “The crypto ecosystem is poised to deliver large-scale economic …

The World Economic Forum, or WEF, has published a resource suite aimed at informing lawmakers and individuals in the private sector about digital assets including central bank digital currencies and stablecoins. On Nov. 19, the WEF announced its Digital Currency Governance Consortium White Paper Series, a resource suite created by 85 organizations from 40 countries around the world. The publication contains 8 separate white papers exploring topics including the impact of lawmakers regulating stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, as well as informing them about the risks, benefits, and alternatives. In addition, the suite addresses regulatory gaps for …

Cryptocurrency risk management firm Elliptic has announced a $60 million Series C funding round led by Evolution Equity Partners and supported by a panoply of venture capital firms including SoftBank Vision Fund 2, as well as existing investors AlbionVC, Digital Currency Group, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital and SBI Group, amongst others. Elliptic's history of funding charts a consistent increase, with their debut funding raise in 2016 totaling $5 million, while their second raise across late 2019 to early 2020 resulted in an additional $28 million. Founded in 2013 and headquartered in London, Elliptic captures analytical data from the blockchain sector …

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 …

Transparency, fairness and efficiency of government systems are some of the areas that are prime for blockchain disruption in public governance. Writing for the WEF Global Agenda section, Matthew Van Niekerk, co-founder and CEO of blockchain-as-a-service outfit SettleMint, highlighted how blockchain adoption could improve public procurement and land registries. According to Van Niekerk, public procurement is one of the main avenues of corruption and wastage in government. As part of the report, the SettleMint CEO argued that the closed-off nature of the process encourages illicit interaction between public officials and private businesses. Van Niekerk surmised that blockchain adoption could facilitate …

With regulated decentralized finance (reg-DeFi) becoming a topic of discussion within and outside the crypto space, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has published a policy toolkit on DeFi. According to a release issued on Tuesday, the toolkit seeks to provide useful guidance for regulators and government policy-makers concerning DeFi regulations. The WEF reportedly partnered with the Blockchain and Digital Asset Project at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. DeFi entrepreneurs, legal experts and financial regulators also collaborated with the WEF to develop the toolkit. Financial regulators involved in developing the policy framework include representatives from agencies in the …

At a panel for the World Economic Forum’s Global Technology Governance Summit today, United Arab Emirates minister of economy Abdulla Bin Touq Al Marri said that cryptocurrency and asset tokenization will be key to the country’s plans to double its economy — currently estimated to be the 34th-largest in the world — in 10 years. Al Marri was joined on the panel, titled the “Arrival of the token economy, from art to real estate,” by artist Harry Yeff and WEF executive Sheila Warren. While much of the conversation centered on the current nonfungible toke craze, Al Marri’s comments centered largely …

Rune Christensen, founder and CEO of DeFi bluechip MakerDAO, says the decentralized finance space is set to move from its current isolated bubble phase toward more integration with the broader financial landscape. Christensen made this known during Tuesday’s plenary session “Behind the Decentralized Finance Hype” at the ongoing Global Technology Governance Summit organized by the World Economic Forum. According to the MakerDAO CEO, DeFi protocols interacting with real-world assets, such as commercial real estate and trade financing, will require significant regulatory input, stating: “The huge difference between the primordial soup of DeFi building and DeFi in the real world is …

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted people across the world, yet a new report from the World Economic Forum suggests that women have been one of the hardest hit gender groups. WEF’s “Global Gender Gap Report 2021” found that the pandemic has pushed back gender parity by an entire generation. Specifically, the report notes that as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, the gender gap between men and women across various professional sectors will now take 135.6 years to close, rather than the previously expected 99.5 years. Gender parity within fast growth professions Vesselina Ratcheva, new economy and society lead for the World …

The economic recession of 2008 to 2009 resulted in the invention of Bitcoin (BTC), creating a brand new financial system that is now growing and developing rapidly. Back then, the Harvard Business Review published an article titled “The Female Economy” pointing out that about $20 trillion of the annual consumer spending in the world was controlled by women, and “That figure could climb as high as $28 trillion in the next five years.” Also in 2009, Claire Shipman and Katty Kay published the book Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success. Though the term “womenomics,” and the concept itself, was …