Day: July 20, 2023

FedNow Service has no relation with CBDCs, Federal Reserve clarifies

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The United States Federal Reserve clarified that its new service for instant payments between organizations — the FedNow Service — has no relation with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The Fed certified the FedNow Service as “ready” after it onboarded 41 financial institutions, 15 service providers and the U.S. Department of the Treasury to test the system before its launch by the end of July 2023. However, the central bank had to clarify that the promise of instant fiat payments and real-time gross settlement (RTGS) is not powered by a…

Polygon 2.0 begins groundwork for decentralized governance

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Polygon Labs has begun work on an expansion intended to include all blockchains and applications running on the Polygon network, and seeks to democratize the upgrade process and encourage community participation. On July 19, the company’s developers presented a proposal to revamp the governance mechanism for the forthcoming Polygon 2.0 roadmap, with the aim of establishing several layer 2s on the network.  In line with the proposal, the developers introduced a comprehensive and innovative governance structure underpinned by “three main pillars,” each tailored to serve specific functions within the Polygon ecosystem.…

Helping public organisations to get information access right

Deborah Clark is the ICO’s Upstream Regulation Manager In ICO25, we established our strategic enduring objective to promote openness, transparency and accountability. This also supports the Commissioner’s duty under section 47 of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to ‘promote the following of good practice by public authorities’ in relation to FOIA and its Codes of Practice. To achieve this, we know that we need to support public authorities to perform in line with their statutory duties and prevent breaches of access to information legislation from occurring in the first…

Terraform Labs appoints new CEO from existing team: Report

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As the co-founder of Terraform Labs, Do Kwon, is facing possible extradition to South Korea or the United States from a jail cell in Montenegro, the company has appointed a new CEO. Kwon still remains the principal shareholder of Terra.  According to The Wall Street Journal, U.S. citizen Chris Amani is Terra’s new CEO. Amani has worked for Terra since 2021, serving as a chief operating officer and chief financial officer. Before that, he was a CEO at the scheduling solution provider Humanity. According to Amani’s LinkedIn, he’s been working…

Kuwait bans crypto and virtual assets transactions

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The state of Kuwait is the latest jurisdiction to ban virtually all operations involving cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC). On July 18, Kuwait’s main financial regulator, the Capital Markets Authority (CMA), issued a circular on supervision and issuance of virtual assets in the country. In the circular, the CMA confirmed the commitment to “absolute prohibition” on major use cases and operations involving cryptocurrencies, including payments, investments as well as mining. The circular also bans local regulators from issuing any licenses allowing firms to provide virtual asset services as a commercial business.…