Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
CBDCs news
- The Bank of Canada is working with its G7 partners on its plans for a digital currency as the country wants to be ready in case another country launches its central bank digital currency (CBDC), Reuters reported, citing Governor Tiff Macklem. “If another country has one and we don’t, that could certainly create some problems,” he was quoted as saying.
Legal news
- Cred, a US-based crypto lender, confirmed that it has suspended its operations due to an unspecified investigation. “Cred is cooperating with law enforcement authorities to investigate” “a recent fraudulent incident,” the lender tweeted, adding that “no client personal data or account information was compromised.” They estimate “to provide an update within the next 2 weeks.”
Regulation news
- The Iranian government allowed using cryptoassets for funding imports “at a time of increased pressure on the country’s normal use of hard currencies,” Iran Daily reported, citing IRNA. “Cryptocurrencies legally mined in Iran will only be exchangeable when they are used to finance imports from other countries,” the report said, adding that “the legal cap for the amount of cryptocurrency for each miner would be determined by the level of the subsidized energy used for mining and based on instructions published by the Ministry of Energy.”
- Panama’s National Assembly is debating a draft crypto bill put forward by a group of four lawmakers. In an official tweet, the National Assembly stated that the bill proposes to “regulate the use of [cryptoassets] and [crypto-related] transactions in the territory of the Republic of Panama.” One of the bill’s provisions includes the imposition of a 4% flat-rate tax on all crypto transactions conducted on domestic trading platforms.
Crypto adoption news
- Singapore-based Stack Funds will make Fidelity Digital Asset Services’ custody solution available to its clients in a bid to meet increasing demand from Asia’s high-net-worth investors and family offices, Bloomberg reported.
- Coinbase is launching its Visa debit card in the US, which will be available in all states except Hawaii. As an optional offer, customers can earn 4% in crypto rewards in stellar (XLM) or 1% in bitcoin (BTC). Customers in the US can now join the waitlist. Coinbase Card is available to customers in nearly 30 countries.
- US-based crypto security specialist and wallet provider Casa said their clients in the US can now buy BTC by linking their wallet with their bank account. The service is not available in Connecticut, Hawaii, New Hampshire, New York, Texas, Vermont, and Virginia, but the company said they’re planning to support these states “soon.”
- NEM (XEM) enterprise blockchain has announced a partnership with fiat infrastructure provider Simplex to make XEM purchasable by credit and debit card across Simplex’s global network of partners, including exchanges, brokers, and wallets. It added that the partnership will provide a global on-ramp to XEM, enabling access to Simplex’s large network of exchanges globally, thus broadening the reach of XEM.
- The Wyoming State Banking Board granted the financial institution Avanti Bank & Trust a bank charter, the type of which, per the announcement, gives Avanti the same powers as national banks in its approved business lines. The approved products include the issuance of a tokenized US dollar called Avit, custody services for digital assets as a “qualified custodian,” application programming interface (API)-based online banking services, where customer deposits must be 100% backed by reserves, and prime services for digital assets. Avanti aims to provide commercial accounts in early 2021 and other accounts with high minimum balance requirements soon after that.
- Major accounting firm KPMG has announced a strategic alliance with crypto market data firm Coin Metrics, in order to offer a suite of complementary products and services that would allow increasing institutional adoption of cryptoassets and public blockchains.
Investments news
- The Graph Foundation announced a successful public sale of its native token GRT, selling USD 12m to the community. Per the announcement, 4% of the total token supply (400m tokens) was allocated to over 4,500 individuals who passed Know Your Customer (KYC) compliance, from 99 countries, excluding the US. These O.G.’s (Original Graphers) will be the initial GRT community members at The Graph’s mainnet launch, which is expected in 30-60 days. The Graph is a decentralized protocol for indexing and querying data from blockchains, starting with Ethereum (ETH).
DeFi news
- Decentralized finance (DeFi) project Aave has transferred governance rights to its token holders, with the core developers handing over the protocol’s admin keys to governance communities led by holders of its native LEND utility token. According to the announcement, the project team will set the Aave Governance contract as Lending Pool Manager, and will give the ownership of the LendingPoolAddressProvider contract and of the TokenDistributor contract to the Aave Governance. The team described this move as “the next important step in our decentralization journey.”
Blockchain news
- Authorities in Chengdu, China, have announced “30 new blockchain adoption applications” at a blockchain forum held in the city. Per Chengdu media outlet Red Star News, the city has revealed plans to implement blockchain-powered urban governance, cross-border trade, smart manufacturing and agriculture, education, healthcare, financial services, and intellectual property by 2022. City authorities added that they intended to form “two to three” blockchain industry “cluster development areas” in Chengdu in the next two years.
- The Kazakhstani government is set to use blockchain technology to power a new real estate registry platform, per LS. The platform will initially pilot in the Nur-Sultan and Shymkent regions and will involve a number of domestic banks. The Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry has also unveiled plans to spend USD over USD 1.1m on a blockchain-powered real-time VAT platform that will feature digital invoices – with rollouts expected to begin December 2021.
