Global banking regulation standard Basel Committee’s latest report estimates the global bank exposure to crypto to be at 0.01%, as the 19 largest financial institutions hold €9.4 billion worth of crypto, which equates to 0.14% exposure. The report took the crypto asset data from 16 Group 1 banks and three Group 2 banks. Ten of…
Investor and founder Vinny Lingham wrote a series of tweets on Sept. 29 outlining a potential short-term future whereby Bitcoin will act as a store of value for those suffering a devaluation of their local currency. The British Pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar recently following the Chancellor’s mini-budget. However, as Lingham…
Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, along with the central banks of Israel and Norway and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), is exploring the use of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for immediate retail and international remittance payments, according to a Sept. 28 release. The collaboration between the central banks and BIS is titled…
A pilot project involving four Asian central bank digital currencies (CBDC) involving real-value transactions was completed on Sept. 23, according to a LinkedIn post by Bank for International Settlements (BIS) advisor Daniel Eidan. The pilot project, titled mBridge project (also known as Multiple CBDC or mCBDC), facilitated $22 million worth of real-value cross-border transactions between…
A former International Monetary Fund (IMF) official, John Kiff, believes that CBDCs need to function offline and that such technology already exists in the form of stored-value cards, which were introduced in the 1990s, according to a blog post published on the IMF website on Sept. 26. Kiff is a retired IMF senior financial sector…
On Sept. 22, a U.S. judge granted the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) petition that requires M.Y. Safra Bank to submit records of taxpayers who may not have reported or paid taxes on crypto transactions. Specifically, the IRS is interested in the records of cryptocurrency prime broker SFOX’s users, according to a press release. New York-based…
The Association of Banks in Lebanon (ABL) announced an indefinite closure of all banks in the country on Sept. 22, as depositors are becoming aggressive about withdrawing their funds. Meanwhile, young Lebanese people are turning to crypto to escape the financial crisis, which has been driving adoption higher since 2021. Due to the economic crisis,…
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) guidance on crypto custody might impede banks from the industry because of the cost of implementation, Reuters reported on Sept. 16. According to the report, the SEC accounting guidelines stated that public companies holding crypto assets on behalf of their clients must account for such assets as liabilities…
ZARP appointed South African financial services group Old Mutual Wealth to manage the cash reserves of its stablecoin, which is pegged to the price of the South African rand(ZAR), in hopes of enhancing trust. ZARP is the only audited and bank-approved stablecoin in South Africa. Connecting RAND and ZARP Rand reserves fully back ZARP tokens….
Bitcoin payment provider OpenNode will test its bitcoin payment solution in Bahrain following approval by the Central Bank of Bahrain. The CBB launched its Regulatory Sandbox in 2017, to allow FinTech startups to experiment with innovative banking and financial solutions under friendly regulatory oversight. OpenNode will leverage the the central bank’s Regulatory Sandbox framework to…