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SUPPORTING CBDCS: Central banks may soon need to develop and issue their own digital currencies, said Agustin Carstens, head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which acts as a sort of central bank for central banks. Speaking to the Financial Times Sunday, Carstens said that BIS is supporting national central bank efforts to research digital currencies. “[I]t might be that it is sooner than we think that there is a market and we need to be able to provide central bank digital currencies,” he said. Full story
PRIVACY PARTIES: Recent conferences held to discuss the two largest privacy-focused cryptocurrencies highlighted the primary differences between monero and zcash. The main difference in ideology comes from the groups developing the protocol: zcash's development comes from a hybrid startup model, while monero is entirely grassroots-driven. There are protocol-level differences too. While both projects are finding ways to apply a cryptography technique called zk-SNARKS to their respective networks, monero relies on ring signatures (which mix small groups of transactions to obfuscate their origins) and zcash produces so-called "toxic waste." Full story
CODE CRITIQUE: Facebook published the early access code for its Libra cryptocurrency two weeks ago on GitHub and nearly 10,000 users have already saved the release, signifying a high wave of interest. More than 1,000 clones have been created as well, although some of these are clear trolls. Albert Castellana, chief product officer at crypto startup Radix DLT noted that “there have been no real code flaws submitted so far, mostly build issues or typos, and then some critics pointing out that this is not a decentralized solution.” Full story
TRADING VENUE: Deutsche Börse-operated trading venue Xetra, which lists financial assets such as stocks, bonds and funds, listed shares of Advanced Blockchain AG on Monday, six months after the company began trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Advanced Blockchain AG develops DLT software for businesses. It’s already built a project called peaq, which seeks to provide a blockchain base layer for enterprises, and is now developing a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Full story
DERIVATIVES TRADING: Crypto derivatives platform EverMarkets Exchange (EMX) is launching worldwide Monday, allowing individuals outside the U.S. to bet on the price of the S&P 500 and bitcoin – with all trades collateralized in bitcoin. EMX currently only offers the two perpetual swaps contracts, but plans to look at gold, crude oil and other cryptocurrencies to build future swaps contracts on. While EMX originally intended to build its platform using a blockchain base, co-founder Craig Austin told CoinDesk that it’s currently built on top of a “standard, cloud-based” technology stack. Full story |
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BELOW $10K? Bitcoin risks falling below $10,000 this week as signs of buyer exhaustion have emerged on technical charts. After all, the cryptocurrency is looking overbought, having rallied for five consecutive months. As a result, key supports at $9,750 and $9,097 could come into play in the near-term. Investors, however, may view the dip as just another chance to get involved in the bull market ahead of next year's mining reward halving. Full story |
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| REGULATION NEEDED: A pair of Dutch ministers – Wopke Hoekstra, Minister of Finance, and Ferdinand Grapperhaus, Minister for Justice and Security – believe that stricter cryptocurrency regulation is needed to take on money laundering in the Netherlands, The Next Web reports. They called for adding new regulations for cryptocurrency wallet providers and exchanges, as well as for new rules to abide by the Financial Action Task Force standards. "Crime cannot pay. Not in the Netherlands, not in Europe, and not globally," they wrote. |
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