“As host of an annual meeting of the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (AFI), El Salvador President Nayib Bukele is promoting the use and adoption of bitcoin to 32 central banks and 12 financial officials representing emerging economies.
The event, which takes place between Monday and Wednesday, covers topics such as financial inclusion and the digital economy, Bukele said, as well as the benefits El Salvador has obtained from becoming the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender last year.
Among the countries attending are Paraguay, Haiti, Honduras, Costa Rica and Ecuador in Latin America; Angola, Ghana, Namibia and Uganda in Africa; and Bangladesh, Palestine and Pakistan in Asia.
El Salvador, which joined the AFI network in 2012, has made significant progress in harnessing digital financial services to advance financial inclusion for individuals and small businesses.”
“The EY OpsChain Supply Chain Manager, which is now available in a beta version, is the first joint project between Ernst & Young and Ethereum scaling tool Polygon.
The project is aimed at tackling chokepoints along supply chains combining product traceability with inventory management. Organizations would create tokens to represent assets and inventory, which the OpsChain manager would then track across the supply chain network.
Polygon Nightfall, the network combining the fruits of the two entities’ labor, offers zero-knowledge proof-based privacy technology, guaranteeing that only selected parties can see the full history of the assets tracked.
Enterprise use cases outside of financial services are still not widely developed. Privacy tools open a whole new world for us.”
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“S&P Global’s (SPGI) ratings division has created a decentralized finance (DeFi) strategy group to help build the company’s decentralized market framework for investors. The team seeks to build out S&P’s analytics and risk assessment capabilities for both traditional finance and DeFi clients.”
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“The Congressional Research Service (CRS), a legislative agency that supports the United States Congress, has published a document that contains a rundown on algorithmic stablecoins and points out key factors to look at in the TerraUSD (UST) crash.
The CRS described the TerraUSD crash as a “run-like” scenario where holders started to doubt the reserves that back the dollar peg. The research agency further explained that run-like scenarios in traditional finance are guarded by regulation and other measures such as bank deposit insurance and liquidity facilities.”
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“It’s not possible to make direct purchases, but after reading about the NFT and seeing an enlarged preview, the user can tap to be redirected to the OpenSea page where they can purchase the item.
The tests are being conducted in an effort to improve artist and fan experiences.
Musicians are actively exploring the NFT market, which could be a vital source of revenue. In 2021, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinoda became the first major-label artist to release a single as an NFT, and the Kings of Leon were the first band to release a whole album in the form of nonfungible tokens. Aoki, according to an estimate from Rolling Stone, made close to $3 million from minting just two NFT pieces out of the 11-piece collection.”
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“China is once again contributing a significant chunk of the world’s bitcoin (BTC) mining operations despite the ban last year. From September 2021 to January of this year, China’s contribution to the bitcoin mining network was second only to that of the U.S.
Following the crackdown on bitcoin mining in the country last year, China’s share was reduced to 0% in July and August. However, the CCAF’s latest data show that the figure was up to 22.29% in September and fluctuated around 20% in October-January.
This suggests that underground mining activity has been underway in China.
Access to off-grid electricity and geographically scattered small-scale operations are among the major means used by underground miners to hide their operations from authorities and circumvent the ban.”
“Internet security company Cloudflare has announced it will run and fully stake several Ethereum validator nodes in the coming months. Cloudflare is committed to playing a small role in the transition to Ethereum 2.0.
Cloudflare says its Ethereum validator nodes ‘will serve as a testing ground for research on energy efficiency, consistency management, and network speed.’ Cloudflare was founded in 2010 to help businesses fortify and speed up their websites. The company’s mission is to build a ‘better internet.'”
“Despite being publicly endorsed by the respective mayors of both cities, MiamiCoin (MIA) and NewYorkCityCoin (NYC) have plunged 90% and 80% since their all-time highs. The assets were developed by the CityCoins project, a Stacks layer-on blockchain-based protocol aiming to provide crypto fundraising avenues for local governments.
Miami mayor Frances Suarez has spoken about the potential use cases of MIA on multiple occasions and most recently announced in February that the local government had disbursed $5.25 million from its reserve wallet to support a rental assistance program.
While the governments have benefited from the partnerships, the user/investor side of things appears to share mining rewards, and a supposed 9% annual BTC yield from “stacking” (essentially staking) the assets on the Stacks blockchain is not enticing enough to drive strong demand.
People will stop mining the coin if they can’t make money off of it.”
The Disrupt 