“Perhaps nothing announced the turbulent crypto industry’s arrival at the world’s biggest business table more than the fact that the WEF itself is holding serious discussions about digital money, with industry participants as key players.
Jeremy Allaire, chairman and CEO at Circle Pay, and Brad Garlinghouse, CEO of Ripple, sat side by side on Monday to discuss remittances and digital money at an issue briefing at the WEF media village. Garlinghouse said that regulatory clarity is a problem that needs to be solved, adding that the U.S. is lagging behind in setting up clear rules for the crypto sector.
We don’t think about cross-border emails. We don’t think about having a cross-border web browsing session, it’s absurd to think about that. And I believe we’re on the cusp of that with money. And I think when it comes to remittances, I believe the concept of a remittance will also disappear.
A panel featuring Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman, PayPal (PYPL) CEO Dan Schulman, U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and economist Jason Furman that purportedly focused on the future of the U.S. economy continued the discussion on crypto. All of the panelists quickly became very enthusiastic about sharing their thoughts on stablecoins and the like, despite the best efforts of New York Times Deputy Managing Editor Rebecca Blumenstein, who moderated the panel, to put a stop to it.
I think we ought to have a framework that allows privately issued stablecoins to thrive in a rational framework and if that happens, I’m not sure how much we need a digital dollar.
Promenade, the main street that leads to the Congress where the official WEF panels take place, is dominated by crypto companies. ‘In 2018 it was all crypto castles and now it’s all about branding. It’s established companies coming to Davos as an industry.‘
That’s not to say central bankers and finance regulators are enamored with the idea of digital assets. On a WEF congress main stage, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), said cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are not money but assets.”
See Also: WEF 2022, May 24: Latest updates from the Cointelegraph Davos team
“Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), who are both speaking at Consensus 2022 in June, have been at work for months on the bipartisan legislation, which they said they expect to make public in June.
The bill would lean on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as the primary regulator for spot markets and futures. The legislation would also clarify that crypto mining would not be regulated under rules for broker-dealers.
We are truly committed to creating the type of baseline and framework legislation that will allow this industry to grow, allow it to flourish. The best thing we can do for all these businesses is to bring clarity.”
“Fintech firm Stripe along with bitcoin (BTC) payments infrastructure platform OpenNode are joining forces to allow Stripe’s merchant customers to instantly convert all or portions of incoming payments to bitcoin via the OpenNode app.
The app gives businesses a simple and secure way to convert incoming payments to Bitcoin in real time, automatically or on demand.”
“Wall Street bankers are arguing that the Federal Reserve launching its own digital dollar could crack the foundations of banking as we know it, according to letters industry lobbyists sent to the U.S. central bank on Friday.
The American Bankers Association, predicted that a digital dollar would mean ‘deposits accounting for 71% of bank funding are at risk of moving to the Federal Reserve.’
While a U.S. digital dollar has frequently come up in congressional hearings and debates over legislation, no bill has yet found traction that would encourage the Fed to set it in motion. The early negotiations over a CBDC often include its potential effect on stablecoins, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said he expects private stablecoins could coexist with a digital dollar.”
The Disrupt 