“According to the report, about 61% of its tokens are backed by “cash and cash equivalents,” meaning cash and money market funds. Yankee Certificates of Deposit – meaning CDs issued by foreign (non-U.S.) banks – comprise a further 13%, U.S. Treasuries account for 12%, commercial paper accounts for 9%, and the remaining tokens are backed by municipal and corporate bonds.
According to footnotes in Tuesday’s attestation, the commercial paper has a “minimum S&P rating of S/T A1,” meaning S&P Global Ratings regards the issuer’s ability to meet its financial obligations as being strong.
Circle intends to go public later this year in a merger with a special purpose acquisition company that would value Circle at $4.5 billion.”
See Also: Paxos Reveals Assets Backing Stablecoins PAX, BUSD
See Also: US Patent Granted to Stablecoin Concept Backed by Government Debt
“Stock tokens and stablecoins backed by securities might be treated as securities under U.S. law, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a stock token, a stable value token backed by securities, or any other virtual product that provides synthetic exposure to underlying securities. These platforms – whether in the decentralized or centralized finance space – are implicated by the securities laws and must work within our securities regime.
Gensler warned that his agency may bring future enforcement actions as well, noting that “we’ve brought some cases involving retail offering of securities-based swaps,” seemingly referring to a case the SEC brought against financial app Abra, which paid $300,000 in penalties. Crypto exchange Binance also recently announced it was closing its stock token business.”
See Also: Stablecoin Rules Are Coming
“In a series of shocking statements early yesterday, European Commission regulators declared that they were “banning anonymous cryptocurrency wallets” as part of a money laundering crackdown.
Rather than a ban on crypto wallets, the E.U. rules would impose tighter but defensible rules on money service providers, such as exchanges or custody services. The new rules would be very similar to the “travel rule” guidelines from the multinational Financial Action Task Force. The rules prohibit providing anonymous services, such as crypto custody or exchange accounts provided by a third party, not the provision of software for self-custody.
Either McGuinness and her communications team misspoke out of genuine ignorance when describing the new rules to the public, or they knowingly obfuscated as a way to misdirect public perception. Unsurprisingly, many news outlets reported McGuinness’s statements without examining them.”
“SpaceX holds BTC, Musk said. SpaceX’s bitcoin holdings had not been previously disclosed. Tesla still holds the asset in its treasury, the CEO said.
On Tesla accepting bitcoin for car payments again, Musk said the network’s energy usage is improving and Tesla is doing some more due diligence on this, but that Tesla would “most likely” resume accepting BTC for payments.
The entrepreneur and provocateur said he personally owns bitcoin, ether and, naturally, dogecoin.”
See Also: Elon Musk says Bitcoin may have already hit his benchmark on renewable energy
“Bank of America’s prime brokerage unit has started the clearing and settlement of cryptocurrency exchange-traded products (ETPs) for hedge funds in Europe. This is the second recent move on the part of the traditionally conservative bank in the volatile cryptocurrency arena. Bank of America has also approved the trading of bitcoin futures for some clients and is clearing cash-settled contracts.
Bank officials may have felt they could not ignore an asset class that has seen numerous companies dive in. The demand for products such as ETPs has been increasing.”
See Also: Rothschild Investment Corp More Than Tripled Bitcoin Exposure in Q2
See Also: Crypto Exchange FTX Raises $900 Million, Valued at $18 Billion
See Also: NFT Marketplace OpenSea Valued at $1.5B in $100M Funding Round Led by A16z
“Mastercard has named the first stablecoin and a handful of partner companies that will help cryptocurrency holders spend their digital assets at merchants that accept the payment giant’s cards. In the pilot announced Tuesday, Circle’s USDC will serve as a bridge between the cryptocurrency in consumers’ digital wallets and the fiat currency paid to merchants.
While it might sound like adding an extra step, swapping a cryptocurrency for a stablecoin and then exchanging the stablecoin for dollars can be quicker or simpler than going directly from crypto to fiat.
Today not all crypto companies have the foundational infrastructure to convert cryptocurrency to traditional fiat currency, and we’re making it easier.
The company is also in talks with long-running crypto startups Uphold and BitPay to provide digital wallet technology and with three firms from the traditional card business to handle back-end functions.”
“The Bank of Canada paper argues that CBDCs endowed with programmability through smart contracts will engender vibrant innovation and competition in digital services. A CBDC would give consumers a non-bank option to store their money risk-free, increasing competition in the market for retail deposits.
A digital currency would also allow users to bypass payment services providers such as credit cards, which antitrust watchdogs globally have said exhibit anticompetitive practices, the central bank said. The digital currency might be a “measured path” to combat big tech monopolies and negative externalities “at least” in payments, the authors argue.”
“The Maker Foundation has announced it is turning over operations entirely to its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), MakerDAO, as founder Rune Christensen has long promised.
The Maker Foundation is the formal organization that was created to steward the protocol through its early days until holders of the MKR token were ready to take on all aspects of stewarding the project, managing all its teams, making necessary upgrades and promoting its use around the world. The intent was always to gradually decentralize the home office out of existence.
From the earliest days of Maker, everyone involved worked tirelessly to devise a framework for scientific governance and create an infrastructure for a new generation of open financial services that can be used by anyone, anywhere, anytime.
The Foundation will formally dissolve within the next few months.”
“281 different crypto projects have announced integrations during 2021 so far. With all time third-party Chainlink integrations currently totaling 650, that means 43% of the project’s partners were onboarded this year. By contrast, roughly 250 partners integrated with Chainlink during all of 2020.
An increasing number of projects are also utilizing Chainlink’s Verifiable Random Function (VRF), which offers decentralized applications a secure and automated solution for generating randomization.
Chainlink VRF provides the Infinity Skies’ smart-contract responsible for chest opening with direct access to a tamper-proof and auditable random number to determine outcomes when opening chests.”
“An insurance collaboration between decentralized protocol Etherisc and microinsurance issuer ACRE Africa has allowed thousands of farmers in Kenya to receive coverage for weather-related risks. As part of the initiative, smallholder farmers are reportedly able to pay as little as $0.50 in premiums to receive coverage for crops adversely affected by climate change.
Some of those already receiving coverage have been paid using an end-to-end solution on the blockchain. Etherisc reported it had dispersed payments to farmers in need using the cash and mobile payment system M-Pesa, with roughly 6,000 expected to be compensated for lost or affected crops before the end of the season.
The solution that we built with our valued partners at ACRE Africa overcomes a number of challenges associated with traditional crop insurance — delayed payments, high premium costs, and lack of transparency.”
“Brady’s platform has also signed exclusive, multiyear NFT deals with fellow iconic sports stars Tiger Woods, Wayne Gretzky, Derek Jeter, Naomi Osaka and Tony Hawk, who will join Autograph’s advisory board. Lionsgate digital collectible content will be launched on Autograph, featuring NFTs focused on such film franchises as “John Wick,” “The Twilight Saga” and “Dirty Dancing,” as well as acclaimed TV series “Mad Men.”
Autograph’s NFT content will be sold on the DraftKings’ digital marketplace. Autograph is slated to launch this summer.”
“The AMMs, collectively named “Trident,” will function as a new base layer for SushiSwap, allowing users to build their own liquidity pools with unique characteristics. SushiSwap has already built four of these, which were unveiled Tuesday.
The first, ConstantProductPool, is a basic “50/50” pool consisting of half one set of tokens and half another. HybridPool enables the exchange of similar assets like stablecoins. ConcentratedLiquidityPool allows liquidity providers to specify a range in price in which to provide liquidity, and WeightedPool allows providers to manually adjust the balance of pooled tokens.
Each of these products already exists in different DeFi protocols too. Uniswap, for instance, was the first 50/50 crypto pool and its latest v3 iteration was the first to introduce a concentrated liquidity function. Curve Finance is the original stablecoin and like-assets AMM, while Balancer allows users to change the weightings of their holdings within a pool.”
“The acting AG’s order requests BlockFi to stop accepting new BIA clients residing in New Jersey beginning July 22, 2021. The order is the latest headache for the embattled lender that, in May, incorrectly deposited and then tried to reverse excessive amounts of bitcoin to users’ accounts.
We will continue to engage with all relevant authorities to protect our clients’ interests and ensure that our products remain available.”
The Disrupt 