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“Decentralized finance (DeFi) could soon boast a real-world use case. MakerDAO is in the process of voting on whether to further diversify the collateral it accepts for loans beyond cryptocurrency and tokens to include real-world assets (RWAs).
Specifically, Maker would also allow supply chain invoices and musicians’ future royalty streams as security when it lends out DAI. These assets would be represented on the Ethereum blockchain by non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Small businesses and artists could take the borrowed DAI and convert it to cash.
These businesses are looking to DeFi as a way to get money quicker and get it on their own terms, without having to go to a bank. They don’t have crypto to get their DAI loans, so they need to be able to use their invoices or their inventory.
The first companies ready to work with Maker on RWAs are ConsoleFreight, a platform for supply chain finance, and Paperchain, which makes musicians’ royalty payments from Spotify instantly available.
These should be seen as the first two [RWAs] in the greatest portfolio of assets that’s ever been built. It’s just the first step. Thousands and thousands of assets will exist alongside them.
The catch for lenders is that in the event of default, they would have to rely on the flesh-and-blood legal system to enforce their rights to the collateral, rather than an automated smart contract that can do so with on-chain assets.
Each Tinlake pool has a legal structure (an SPV) that mirrors what happens on-chain, ensuring that a claim on the RWA can be made by the investors.”
See Also: TUSD and USDC-B Approved by Maker Governance as Collateral Types in the Maker Protocol
“The introduction of digital currencies may justify a fundamental shift in the architecture of a financial system, a central bank ‘open to all.’
The paper determined the set of allocations achieved with commercial banks could also be achieved with a CBDC. If depositors started to exclusively deposit with the central bank it could end up becoming a “deposit monopolist,” attracting deposits away from the commercial banking sector.
This monopoly power eliminates the forces that induce the central bank from delivering the socially optimal amount of maturity transformation.”
“Digital currencies could supersede bank accounts as low-interest rates make them increasingly obsolete.
That’s the view of Massimo Buonomo, the UN’s global blockchain expert, who added that digital currencies, particularly central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), could soon ‘eliminate the need for a bank account‘ altogether.
Buonomo said banks and credit cards have long enjoyed a duopoly on digital payments, but the advent of digital currencies means users could sidestep them entirely. Low-interest rates, enforced by central banks to encourage more borrowing, may expedite the process.
Those who are going to suffer the most [from digital currencies] are the credit card processing companies and the banks.”
“The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said it was reviewing its regulations around digital bank activities to ensure that these regulations ‘continue to evolve with developments in the industry.‘
What are the barriers or obstacles, if any, to further adoption of crypto-related activities in the banking industry? Are there specific activities that should be addressed in regulatory guidance, including regulations?
The notice today indicates that Acting Comptroller Brooks is serious about modernizing banking regulations so that innovators can bring new solutions to the legacy financial system.”
“DeversiFi says one of the main issues traders have with conventional DEXs is most are completely public. That’s a conundrum for professional traders who worry such openness endangers their proprietary trading strategies. With DeversiFi trades are executed off-chain, so that third-parties can’t monitor the trading behaviors of individual users.
We have interest from 70 funds and large traders and have 18 funds ready to trade on DeversiFi 2.0 at or around launch.
We see DeversiFi as being the first sufficiently fast and scalable non-custodial alternative to centralized exchanges.”
“Moscow citizens will be able to cast their votes on Vladimir Putin’s Constitutional amendments online via blockchain-powered e-voting. Blockchain will help to anonymize and encrypt each vote to provide safety and immutability of data.
The Constitutional amendments proposal aims to allow Putin to serve two more six-year terms — until 2036.”
“Marked for “law enforcement only,” a two-part report by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) analyzed the privacy tool’s impact on using the Bitcoin blockchain to investigate crimes.
Wasabi is a wallet that tries to get around Bitcoin’s radical transparency, giving users more privacy by scrambling transactions together and confusing the trail.
[The report] asks whether law enforcement can “demix” these transactions, answering that ‘realistically speaking, in most cases the answer is negative,’ though if a user messes up, there are ways to do it.
‘Things are not looking good‘ for law enforcement thanks to this relatively new software, the EC3 warned.”
“PoD proves that the user has physical access to a specified device, providing security even when a login and password have been stolen.
The burden of storing keys to sign and prove identity is managed by the SGX enclave. The enclave has to be assigned to the user in advance, meaning that the user can only access any service protected by PoD using pre-assigned devices. Not even the user has knowledge of the private key stored on the enclave.”
“Web Traffic Factor analyzes the user activity on trading platforms, including the number of page views, unique visitors, the time spent on site, search engine bounce rate and search engine rankings.
The data provider, which was purchased for an unspecified sum by Binance in early April, started adjusting its ranking system soon after the deal took place. As a result, Binance has come on top of its exchange ranking, drawing criticism from the community and other trading platforms.”
The Disrupt 