Day: December 16, 2021

French Central Bank Completes First Stage of Its CBDC Experiments

The Banque de France said it completed the first stage of its experiments into a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) and plans to move on to the next phase, focusing on cross-border payments. France’s central bank has been exploring the use of a CBDC for the exchange of money between financial institutions since March 2020. The final stage of the first tranche of experiments consisted of the issuance of a digital bond on a blockchain with settlement in CBDC, which was conducted with numerous partners including banking giant HSBC.…

Crypto Connectivity Startup GIANT Raises $5M From CoinFund

GIANT Protocol has raised $5 million on its plans to shake up the telecom industry by tokenizing bandwidth. CoinFund led the seed round. Gumi Cryptos, which backed sister project Wificoin, also participated, as did crypto venture capital firms Blockchange, Entheos, Argonautic and Bronco Fund, a press release said. “GIANT has uniquely pledged to convert bandwidth into a digital asset that can be used as a currency,” said Jake Brukhman of CoinFund. The startup plans to work directly with telecom companies to set up…

NEAR Foundation Appoints Ex-Circle Exec Marieke Flament as CEO

Flament, who was Circle’s managing director for Europe, is a French-born computer engineer who has also worked at luxury giant LVMH, Boston Consulting Group, Expedia’s Hotels.com and most recently banking app Mettle. She is credited with helping Circle add 2 million users over a two-year period, and had a hand in the launch of the popular USDC stablecoin. Source

It Can’t Be ‘Decentralization or Bust’

The Bitcoin white paper doesn’t mention the word decentralization once – but it’s obviously there by another name: peer-to-peer. The Ethereum white paper mentions decentralization about 40 times. And when the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (PWG) released its report on stablecoins two weeks ago, 15% of it was dedicated to the concept of decentralization and how to appropriately manage it when most of financial services remain heavily centralized (and analog). Decentralization is one of the more hard-to-define words in an industry filled with confusing neologisms. It seems to…

Historically accurate ‘momentum indicator’ hints at possible Bitcoin breakout ahead

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Bitcoin (BTC) could see a “massive bullish move” if a classic trigger from the 2021 bull run repeats this week. In a tweet on Dec. 16, on-chain analyst Matthew Hyland, known by the Twitter handle Parabolic Matt, drew attention to Bitcoin’s momentum indicator. Momentum indicator hints at potential “massive bullish move” While still under $50,000, Bitcoin has already broken out of a long-term downtrend on the momentum indicator, which measures closing prices against those from a period in the past. Two such breakouts have occurred this year, and after each…

Adidas Originals to launch debut NFT collection

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Adidas Originals have announced the upcoming launch of their nonfungible token (NFT) collection titled Into the Metaverse. Although details on the supply are sparse at this time, it has been revealed that the digital asset will serve as an access token, promising holders’ exclusive access to future merchandise, physical and digital product and services, rewards within the newly attained land plot in The Sandbox, and more. The collection’s sale will commence via the company’s official website on Dec. 17 at a price of 0.2 ETH, equivalent to approximately $810 at…

IMF chief economist calls for global policy on cryptocurrency

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Gita Gopinath, the chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has called for a global policy to be put in place that will regulate cryptocurrency, instead of banning it. Pitching for a global policy, Gopinath, who will soon take charge as the deputy managing director of the IMF, argued that if countries were to ban crypto then they would not have any control over offshore exchanges that are not subject to their country’s regulations, which could result in them being ignored completely. “There are challenges to banning it whether…