Snippings

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The addition of Egypt will also relieve the state budget of the pressure to find dollars to meet imports because members of that bank can use their national currencies in bilateral trade, he said. Legislator Mervat Mattar, stated that “the BRICS group is an important forum that can divert the course of the international economy from US and dollar dominance.” He also welcomed the Russian central bank’s decision a week ago to add the Egyptian pound to its list of foreign currencies exchangeable for rubles.

From Egyptian parliament approves agreement to join the BRICS bank – Prensa Latina.

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Digital identity is a public good which requires government support and regulation while tech and service providers are going to have to take responsibility for security and fraud, rather than individuals as attacks become more sophisticated. The UK needs to make decisions quickly on areas such as verifiable credentials otherwise it will be isolated from international interoperability and decreasingly attractive as a place for investment.

From UK govt urged to step up role in digital ID as public good at Westminster eForum | Biometric Update:

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Between the first quarter of 2021 and third quarter of 2022 (the most recent quarter for which data is available), the percentage of Americans that said that they used a mobile wallet at some point in the previous three months increased to 49% from 38%.
That increase reflects a significant erosion of some historical barriers to adoption.
Chief among them: trial. The percentage of people who said they have heard of mobile wallets, but have never set one up, declined to 24% from 37%, and those that said that are concerned about security declined to 21% from 25%.

From Mobile wallets gaining popularity in US:

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TSB says that Meta platforms, including Facebook, accoutn for four fifths of the frauds that they have to reimburse. It’s reasonable to ask why bans are being saddled with the bill

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1. Two-thirds of central banks surveyed expect to issue a CBDC within 10 years.

2. Central banks are pursuing CBDC for various reasons, but none cited improving cross-border payments as the main motivation.

3. Nevertheless, many thought that inter-linking CBDCs offers a promising avenue for improving cross-border payments.

4. Banks will not have the exclusive right to distribute CBDC. Instead, they will be joined by new, regulated players.

5. Avoiding low adoption of CBDCs is a primary concern for central banks, while bank disintermediation is a secondary concern.

From Digital Monetary Institute Future of Payments 2022.

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Iven that both Apple and Google have fully tokenized browser solutions, and that these solutions are far in advance of SRC, I’m questioning the viability of SRC.  Browser OEMs would need to implement the payment provider spec for SRC to work, now it seems proprietary APIs have been created by Google which would supersede the w3C APIs.

From Google’s Browser Tokens Payments | Noyes Payments Blog.

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Establishing a reputation as an international currency issuer, like the US, is a slow and arduous process (Eichengreen et al. 2017). Throughout modern history, many would-be contenders, like Japan or the euro area, have failed to displace the dominance of the dollar. In his Nobel Prize lecture, Sargent (2012) stressed the importance and difficulty in building a reputation for the newly created US in the 1780s and the newly created euro area in the 2000s. Whether or not the Renminbi will become an international currency is also uncertain. Our model offers a cautionary tale to optimistic views that China might quickly or straightforwardly emerge as an international currency provider.

From Internationalising like China | CEPR.

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Russia and Iran are working together on a cryptocurrency backed by gold — a ‘stablecoin’ that could replace the dollar for payments in international trade.

The two countries, both of which have been hit by Western sanctions, want to issue a “token of the Persian region” for use in crossborder transactions, with a plan to launch it in a special economic enclave in Astrakhan in southern Russia, which already handles Iranian shipments.

From Dollar Dominance Under Threat: 5 New Challenges to the Greenback’s Reign.

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In the 2015 book Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day, former Harvard magazine editor Craig Lambert focused on the myriad tasks that used to be done by other people, which most of us now do for ourselves, usually with the help of digital devices. This includes everything from banking to travel bookings, ordering food in restaurants to bagging groceries, not to mention downloading and navigating the apps we need to pay parking tickets or track our children’s school assignments or even troubleshoot our own tech problems.

From The real cost of shadow work | Financial Times.

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British households cut more than 2m subscriptions to services such as Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+ last year, as the cost of living crisis fuelled the first annual decline since the UK streaming revolution began a decade ago.

Despite a boost from the royal family, with viewers flocking to the Harry & Meghan documentary and enduring demand for episodes of The Crown, almost 900,000 UK households gave up on the streaming services last year, as the total number having at least one paid-for subscription fell from 17.12m in 2021 to 16.24m.

From UK homes cancelled 2m streaming services last year as cost of living soared | Netflix | The Guardian.

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