“Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) introduced a new proposal to have the federal government issue $2,000 per month to residents.
Under the ABC Act, Congress would authorize the Federal Reserve to create “FedAccounts,” meaning “Digital Dollar Account Wallets,” which would allow U.S. residents, citizens and businesses located in the country to access financial services.
No later than January 1, 2021, the Secretary shall offer all recipients of BOOST payments the option to receive their payments in digital dollar wallets.
The bill was introduced in the wake of ongoing issues with issuing $1,200 stimulus payments authorized under the CARES Act.”
See Also: Digital Dollar Project: Don’t Rush Digital Dollar During COVID-19 Crisis
Libra bows down, pivots to fully regulated and permissioned corporatecoin.
“The Libra Association is pulling back from its original vision of a global digital currency backed by a basket of national currencies.
The consortium set up last year by Facebook now plans to develop a handful of stablecoins each representing a different fiat currency. One libra coin could be tied to the U.S. dollar, for example, another to the euro and so on.
Every stablecoin would be backed by a reserve of high-quality assets and short-term government securities such that their value is preserved.
Libra still intends to issue a multi-currency stablecoin, but it would be backed by the new stablecoins, rather than directly by fiat currencies held in a bank.
In a further concession, the association’s new white paper removes any mention of ever introducing permissionless participation in the Libra network. All counterparties operating nodes in the Libra network will remain known to all others.
The cover letter to the revised white paper also hints at limiting what individuals and unregulated entities can do on the network. “Unhosted Wallets” will be subject to balance and transaction limits, and initially, the network “will only be accessible to” virtual asset service providers (VASPs).
Of course, limiting the ability of unregulated parties to interact with the network may hamper Libra’s stated goal of fostering financial inclusion. Without permissionlessness, many in the industry would argue a classic centralized system would work as well or better.
I don’t think it means much for crypto because it’s not really (sovereign-resistant) crypto.”
“The use of the Ethereum network to move value around has shot to record levels. Messari, revealed data showing the total value transferred on the Ethereum network, including ether and ERC-20 stablecoins, now matches that of the Bitcoin network.
Value transfer refers to the U.S. dollar value of the total units on a blockchain that are transferred on a given day.
Ethereum is becoming the dominant value transfer layer in crypto.”
“Open interest in bitcoin futures listed on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) has recovered significantly from the March lows, indicating a resurgence in institutions that want to buy the cryptocurrency.
An increase in open interest along with an increase in price is said to confirm an upward trend. Put simply, bitcoin’s recent rally has legs.”
See Also: DeFi Market Cap Back Above $1 Billion After March Market Crash
“PayJoin (also called P2EP) is a relatively new way to send private transactions in bitcoin and may offer better privacy than current popular alternatives such as CoinJoin.
The main benefit of PayJoin’s ConJoin implementation, on the other hand, is that once done, the transactions look the same as other transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. So instead of many senders mixing their transactions, only the sender and receiver mix a transaction.
It breaks blockchain analysis heuristics.”
See Also: Bitcoin Startup Purse to Shut Down After 6-Year Run
“This month, agencies and enterprises in the Xiangcheng District of Suzhou will reportedly be paying 50% of local workers’ transport subsidies in the new digital currency (also referred to as DC/EP, for “digital currency/electronic payment”).
Enterprises, institutions and various management committees in the district are being requested to sign a digital currency distribution agreement with a relevant wage distribution bank and to install a digital wallet for everyone in their workforce.
While users themselves are not likely to feel much difference using the system if compared to popular payments channels such as Alipay and WeChat, the report notes that the currency’s blockchain structure will ensure ‘traceability, encryption and supervisability.'”
“Bent revealed that since last year he had been mining Bitcoin with the Great American Mining (GAM) company, using excess gas formed as a byproduct of mining oil to power the rigs.
If designed correctly, containers filled with Bitcoin miners have far superior uptime and are 5x more profitable (on average) than sending the gas to a pipeline to sell.
The concept is becoming more popular. The Winklevoss Twins have invested in Crusoe Energy Systems, a Texas company that converts the waste from surplus natural gas to mine cryptocurrencies. Up in Canada oil mining company Black Pearl Resources are mining Bitcoin to help offset operational costs.”
See Also: $12M Wheat Trade Between U.S. and Indonesia Settled on Blockchain
“Coinbase Custody is making it easier for its clients to vote their tokens on more decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, starting with Compound. Coinbase Custody clients have been able to vote their MKR tokens without moving them out of storage since last October.
The move is meant to get more voter involvement from Coinbase Custody clients, since DeFi ecosystems have seen notoriously low participation rates to date.”
“[T]he Court is puzzled by Defendant’s apparent argument that Judge Reinhart must blindly accept items produced by Defendant such that Judge Reinhart cannot rely on his past experiences with Defendant in this litigation (including his history of providing forged materials and giving perjured testimony) in evaluating whether Defendant has carried his burden as to privilege.
Wright now has until April 17 to produce the requested documents.“
“This seems very worrisome, and that they may implement something that has not been publicly reviewed. A centralized approach has more privacy risks, as well as the potential for the re-appropriation of data for other purposes, like state surveillance.
This opens the gates to privacy hell: It could give governments the ability to build the ‘social graph’ for everyone who downloads the app.”
The Disrupt 