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Jun 26 2021

Central Bank Digital Currency and Financial Stability (CBDC) | New Forms of Digital Money

Firstly, let’s start by explaining Central Bank Digital Currency, i.e., CBDC, which necessarily denotes the fiat-like currency of a nation. These are mostly present by making utilization of electronic records or digital token to represent the virtual form.
It has been years since digital currencies have started dominating the complete framework, just like some cryptocurrencies such as Ether and Bitcoin, which have encountered steep rise as well as a downfall. Amidst all of these, they had been in talks. Digital currencies work on a DLT referred to as blockchain technology.
Understanding CBDC
The blockchain for digital currencies has owed to magnum opus popularity in years, all thanks to its characteristics of decentralization and non-regulated nature. Bankers started to see this as a plausible danger to the old-style banking mechanism that is not only different from it in terms of functioning but also is different in terms of its decentralized and regulation-free nature. The traditional banking system works under the discretion of a primary authority like the central bank.
Now the cryptocurrencies that are available by newer sources or most unreliable sources raise the senses of awareness about the chances of thefts, scams, and hacks. And this lack of clarity is the reason for which there is no suitable reserve maintenance to back up the valuations of cryptocurrencies.
Now, seeing the inclination of these cryptos, central banks around the world are planning to launch their cryptocurrencies. Their version of cryptocurrencies will be monitored by the corresponding centralized banks of each country, and they are termed Central bank digital currencies. The base of the digital money will also be controlled by the CBDC. And this will be funded by monetary assets like foreign currencies or gold.
CBDC with blockchain for virtual currencies has the potential to bring ease and security of cryptocurrencies into one place. In this type of currency, the top authority in banking of the countries has all the responsibility and is liable to every action.
Could this adoption of CBDC bring Financial Stability?
Thus, it is much clearer now that CBDCs have the capability to provide what other cryptocurrencies are offering but in a more different way. It is providing virtual money with safety, accessibility, security, and transparency.
With the presence of a blockchain wallet for digital currencies, the public now has the power to access the lawful tender, even when you don’t have money. With the help of CBDC, both cash and cryptocurrency will be recognized as a legal mode of payment.
With the growing number of years, the usage of notes is gradually decreasing, as now people are more used to payment options like cards, contactless payments, and cryptocurrencies. There have been several negative cases concerning cash, although they are not excluded by central bodies.
So, now CBDCs will speed up the process of making society a cashless one. And with the declination in swipes with card-based transactions, it is presumed that people are rapidly adapting to novel approaches for making finance-related transactions.
Blockchain for financial stability can be considered as a viable option these days for making payments because it is government-regulated. The central bank’s digital currency gets completely aided and governed by the central bank, which raises the assurance and credibility of cryptocurrency. Now, these types of assurances are growing the hopes of companies that are using the technology of blockchain to invest freely.
Traditionally for making cross-border-based payments, RTGS infrastructure is mandatory for banks to offer interbank commitments. The most advantageous side of CBDC is that it can be used in making cross-border-based payments. When it comes to cross-border and interbank-based settlements, the CBDC is highly credible.
The current traditional set-up of banking lags in its efficiency of offering cross-border-based payments. Limitations like time lags even can result in exposure to several risks. But on the other side of the coin, the CBDCs are filled with several advantages like providing zero counterparty credit risk, anonymity, and 24hours accessibility.
But legalized wholesale-based CBDCs might fail to provide efficiency over the existing traditional banking set-up, as it needs to evolve furthermore.
Can CBDC Help in Improving Payment Systems?
More enhanced productivity in payment transactions is one of the plus sides of CBDC because it has a more reliable security set-up that can be utilized in the making of retail and also large-value-based payment mechanisms.
Now talking about the retail payment option, where it will further improve their payment efficiency, CBDC will get longer hours for settlements with quicker settlement in terms of wholesale and interbank payment systems.
Conclusion
Thus, the central bank, digital currencies, and financial stability can be considered to hold a firm position in the near future because it is faster and safer. With the up-gradation in its systems, it holds the potential to overtake the current banking set-up.
 Central Bank Digital Currency and Financial Stability (CBDC) | New Forms of Digital Money
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Jun 22 2021

Hedge fund that shorted GameStop closes as $1.13B GME stock offer completes

One of the hedge funds badly burned in the infamous GME social media driven short squeeze is closing down, while GameStop itself has just completed its $1.13 billion equity offering.

According the Financial Times, London-based White Square Capital operated by Florian Kronawitter has closed its main fund and will return capital to investors.

White Square Capital reportedly had $440 million in assets under management (AUM) at its peak. The hedge fund was one of many that suffered double digit percentage losses from short positions in January, when the Wall Street Bets subreddit helped pump GME’s price from $21 on Jan. 12 to around $345 on Jan. 27.

However the FT reported a source as saying the fund’s closure was unrelated to its GameStop misadventure. In a letter to investors, co-founder Kronawitter cited the traditional equity long-short model was being “challenged” in the current financial climate, as there are “way too many fish in the pond” that operate with the same long-short strategy.

“The traditional edge is being arbed away [eroded by other investors], there’s an oversupply of capital,” Kronawitter said.

The co-founder also highlighted that the hedge fund’s opportunities for arbitrage have “diminished” due to the “onslaught of capital caused by central bank monetary interventions.”

These factors are also accompanied by the relative ease of access to information and cheaper investment alternatives, with Kronawitter asserting that it brings it to question how the management fees from hedge funds can be justified in the current market.

In a Reddit thread discussing the news on the r/wallstreetbets subreddit, members of the group shared their delight, with user “turtleduck77” likening hedge funds that shorted GME to dominoes falling, noting that its “Time to invest in dominoes! The game not the pizza.”

GameStop completes ATM offering

Yesterday GameStop announced the completion of an at-the-market (ATM) equity offering, with the company selling five million shares of common stock generating almost $1.3 billion before commissions and offering expenses.

“GameStop will use net proceeds from the ATM Offering for general corporate purposes as well as for investing in growth initiatives and maintaining a strong balance sheet,” the announcement read.

One of the growth initiatives likely to be funded is GameStop’s NFT marketplace set to be launched on Ethereum.

While details are sparse at this stage, the firm’s blockchain division is reportedly headed by the former business operations leader of Ethereum and Loopring DEX, Matt Finestone.

The smart contract platform is based on the ERC-721 NFT standard and was created by foobar, a developer who has worked on wrapper solutions for the classic version of Crypto Punks, HD Mooncats, and MooncatHelper NFT projects in the past.

https://t.co/ruuCD2q8JD pic.twitter.com/CxcaGKPeJk

— foobar (@0xfoobar) May 25, 2021

While top crypto assets and memecoins have been in a major down trend since May 12, GME’s meme stock has increased 36.6% within that time frame, increasing from $161 on May 12, to $220 as of today, according to TradingView.

In comparison, data from CoinGecko shows that crypto’s nearest equivalent in meme coin Dogecoin has cooled down, has dropped 64% — declining from a price range of $0.50 on May 12, to $0.18 today.

Hedge fund that shorted GameStop closes as $1.13B GME stock offer completes

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Jun 21 2021

Chris Giancarlo: U.S. risks becoming ‘backwater’ without central bank digital currency

One of the few high-profile public officials to have served under both the Obama and Trump administrations, Chris Giancarlo is a former Wall Street executive-turn-regulator who is widely-respected by nearly all parties on Capitol Hill. As the former Chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, however, his latest venture, the Digital Dollar Foundation, might well test his soft touch with politicians.

The former regulator is now leading the Foundation towards five pilot programs set to launch this year, part of a broader effort to help the United States regain the lead in a race against China towards a functioning CBDC.

According to Giancarlo, however, the US’s priorities when it comes to a CBDC shouldn’t merely be jingoistic:

“What’s very clear, [is] that China intends their digital yuan to be an instrument of state surveillance. […] And this is why it’s one of the reasons why the digital dollar project, we’re so animated, because we feel that our new mission is to make sure central banks wake up to this and the US Fed wakes up to this, that these social values that got us here, the rule of law, a free capital markets, free enterprise, zones of individual economic privacy, are ingrained in a new digital future of the US dollar, and that we don’t allow ourselves to be taken in by what China’s doing and match that state surveillance approach.”

However, the race to a CBDC isn’t merely about maintaining current US values, but also potnetially about unlocking new forms of smart contract-based value for the wider population.

“The notion of a digital currency, whether it be sovereign and non-sovereign, tied to smart contracts, allows money to solve the old problem of being able to move it in place, i.e. moving around the globe as easily as you could send a text message, but also move it in time. Heretofore, money was a temporal thing, but with a smart contract you can say, I want to program my money today to go to my one grandchild in the future once they graduate college and all of those contingencies can be programmed in. […] With a programmable digital currency, you can program it today to move around the globe in space, but move around the globe in time. And that is such, I think, such a powerful construct.”

Ultimately, this work is part of an effort to ensure that America maintains technological supremacy.

“You can’t stop the march of technology in time, and if you do, you become a backwater. We in the United States have always been open to innovation and we must be open to this innovation as well. In a prudent way, in a way that’s in correspondence with our society that expects investor protections and a role for government. […] And it’s one that I’m very excited to be involved in.”

Watch the full interview here:

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Chris Giancarlo: U.S. risks becoming \’backwater\’ without central bank digital currency

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Jun 21 2021

Portugal Grants First Crypto Exchanges Operating Licenses

For the first time ever, Banco de Portugal has approved operating licenses to regional cryptocurrency trades.

Recently, the central bank gave out the statement that Portuguese-based trades “Mind the coin” and “Criptologia” are now enlisted as virtual assets service providers.

The central bank has issued only these two names in the list on their official website. Banco De Portugal took around nine months to finalize the decision. In September 2020, Criptojola was reported to perform its initial registration to give out its services as a virtual assets provider.

Mind the Coin and Criptoloja have been given permission to perform crypto exchange services between fiat currencies and different virtual assets within the Portuguese region. Furthermore, they are also allowed to cover various transfer services, safeguarding, and administration works for such assets.

Banco De Portugal has been awarded as one of the most crypto-friendly nations in entire Europe, and the whole continent seems to be proud of it.

In May 2021, Jean Galea, a well-known investor, and blogger said that Portugal is becoming a haven for all the individuals involved in the crypto world in one of his write-ups. Cryptocurrency income continues to be immune from capital gains taxes and VAT in Portugal unless the income is associated with professional trading activity.

Which other European countries are involved in Crypto exchanges?

Nonetheless, Portugal isn’t the only European country to accept crypto trading and services with a warm welcome.

In the final week of May 2021, The Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) granted “XCoins,” a country-based leading exchange provider, the license to class 3 VFA (Virtual Financial Asset).

The founder and CEO of XCoins, Rob Frye, stated that Xcoins is dominating the space of digital assets worldwide by standing as one of the earliest cryptocurrency platforms to reach this benchmark implies that they are completely capable of paving the path for an additionally secured and organized industry.

This is another such authorization the Malta Financial Services Authority has consented to a crypto trade this year. The firstest crypto platform to obtain a VFA authorization of a similar degree was “Crypto.com.” By earning the milestone of receiving the license a couple of weeks before XCoins, the company called this achievement a historic moment for the cryptocurrency world.

Moreover, Crypto.com had previously made a plea to the MFSA to serve as a licensed financial institution, but the plea didn’t get approved. Again this year, the company has presented its plea to the Maltese authority; however, the regulator’s verdict is still not finalized.

European countries like MFSA and Portugal are surpassing the crypto exchange milestone!

Conclusion

Further, Criptoloja is currently seeking to bring Portuguese folk together who are interested in investing in crypto assets. However, the service provider company is not confident enough to start accounts in out-of-country trades. Nevertheless, investors say that the tremendous adoption of cryptocurrencies in Portugal is forming a new era of traders.

To get instant updates about Blockchain Technology and to learn more about online Blockchain Certifications, check out Blockchain Council.

Portugal Grants First Crypto Exchanges Operating Licenses

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Jun 19 2021

3 reasons why Ethereum may underperform Bitcoin in the short-term

Ether (ETH) price outperformed Bitcoin (BTC) by 173% from March 28 to May 15. The incredible bull caused the token to reach a $4,380 all-time high. However, as cryptocurrency markets initiated a sharp drop on May 12, the trend started to reverse, and since then, Ether has underperformed by 25%.

Some might say it is a technical adjustment after a strong rally. While this partially explains the move, it excludes some critical factors, including the fast advance of smart-contract network competitors and Bitcoin being adopted as an official currency for the first time.

*Ether / Bitcoin price at Binance. Source: TradingView*

Notice how the ETH/BTC ratio rallied again on June 8, reaching 0.77 despite Ether’s price remaining 36% below its all-time high and ranging near $2,800. To understand what could have been driving the ratio, analysts need to analyze Ether and Bitcoin price drivers separately.

Mike Novogratz may have been misinterpreted in his interview

Ether’s bull run potentially got an extra leg due to intense praise from institutional investors. Traders could have picked up a sense of urgency, known as FOMO, and promptly shifted their Bitcoin exposure towards the leading altcoin.

On May 13, New Yorker magazine published an interview with Mike Novogratz, the founder, and CEO of Galaxy Digital. In the conversation, Novogratz said:

“All of a sudden, you have decentralized finance and NFTs both on Ethereum at the same time roughly, with wild accelerating growth.”

Novogratz was then questioned on how much higher Ether could reach, to which he answered:

“You know, it’s dangerous to give predictions on the highs. But could it get to $5,000? Of course it could.”

While an Ethereum holder might have interpreted it as a prediction, others could have understood it as a wild guess, likely depending on general crypto market conditions.

However, roughly a week later, a report from Goldman Sachs revealed the global investment bank believed that Ether had a “high chance of overtaking Bitcoin as a dominant store of value.” Interestingly, one of the main quotes in the report was directly from Novogratz’s interview with the New Yorker.

At its peak, Binance Chain controlled 40% of DEX volume

While Ethereum has kept its 80% dominance on net value locked in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) has reached a 40% market share on DEX exchanges.

*PancakeSwap DEX daily volume vs. top 10. Source: DeBank*

The successful growth of the DeFi industry and non fungible token (NFT) markets caused intense congestion on the Ethereum network, raising median fees to $37 in mid-May. That bottleneck triggered an activity exodus to competing networks, and PancakeSwap was best positioned to capture that flow.

To make things worse, important DeFi projects expanded to Binance Smart Chain, including yield aggregator Harvest Finance and decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch. Investors quickly realized that the trend could continue as the competing smart-contract network provided an easy solution for dApps looking for cheaper alternatives.

No country is adopting the ‘Ethereum standard’

Bitcoin might have had a subpar performance over the past 30 days because it has failed to break the $42,000 resistance multiple times. However, a major milestone was achieved when El Salvador became the first country to make Bitcoin legal tender on June 12.

After the Central American country made the decision law, a handful of other Central and South American countries began discussing the advantages of taking a similar path.

Ethereum is undertaking a redesign that will change the issuing rate and how entities get paid to secure the network by moving away from the Proof of Work model. Meanwhile, Bitcoin is making sure that every upgrade is backward-compatible and maintaining its strict monetary policy.

That is the main reason why Ether will not outperform Bitcoin over the next 12 months, or at least until there’s a better understanding of how Ethereum network dominance of smart contracts will be.

Professional investors avoid uncertainties at all costs, and cryptocurrency markets already present plenty of that. There’s just no reason for institutional investors to ignore the risks while competing networks eat Ethereum’s lunch.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.

3 reasons why Ethereum may underperform Bitcoin in the short-term

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