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ut some risks posed by cryptoassets are new: oracles (which supply smart contracts with off-chain information such as asset prices), smart contracts and custodians are all vulnerable to hacks, which could undermine confidence. Confidence could also be undermined by issues with the blockchain settlement layer (eg Ethereum), including: miners extracting rents by front-running transactions, and high transaction fees and validator concentration, which can enable malicious behaviour in how new blocks are added to the blockchain.

From Cryptoassets, the metaverse and systemic risk – Bank Underground:

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And, more recently, the CFPB took measures to increase federal oversight of the fintech industry, with the announcement of a new use for old authority, known as 1024, to supervise non-bank companies that it believes pose risks to consumers.

By invoking 1024 authority, the CFPB is looking to “level the [regulatory] playing field” between banks and certain fintech companies not currently subject to federal oversight. Importantly, the CFPB views “uncontrolled flows of consumer data” as risky and may recommend, through examination, that covered entities establish secure data-sharing methods (i.e., APIs) with third parties, including depositories.

From From trusted stewards of money to data | Bank Automation News:

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dYdX recently became aware of a significant increase in accounts flagged by our compliance provider that were subsequently blocked by dYdX. Many accounts were blocked because a certain portion of the wallet’s funds (in many cases, even immaterial amounts) were associated at some time with Tornado Cash, which was recently added to the sanctions list by the U.S. Treasury’s OFAC. This sudden influx of flags affected many account holders that never directly engaged with Tornado Cash, and often such users do not realize the origin of the funds transferred to them during various transactions prior to interacting with our platform, but we must nevertheless maintain certain restrictions.

From Tornado Outage:

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Sometimes, if they money didn’t arrive one week, the shopkeepers who knew your family member was in England would have a slate and you would get a little bit of sympathy.

From Remittances in an envelope – Payments:Unpacked.

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This close connection to their neighborhoods allows kiranas to provide a service crucial to many customers: credit. The shopkeeper will note down their purchases in a small notebook called a “bhai khata,” and the balance is normally settled on a weekly or monthly basis. Large parts of the Indian economy operate on this kind of informal credit, says Rajat Agarwal, a professor of management studies at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, and cash flow is often a problem.

From Delivery apps are reshaping life in India’s megacities | MIT Technology Review.

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What we’re discovering is that, like good claret, McLuhan’s insights have improved with age. His problem was that he was running ahead of the neuroscience that he needed to support his—and Innis’s – conjectures about the impact of media not just on society but also on our brains.

From Why the medium really is the message | Memex 1.1.

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The California-based broker enticed a generation of first-time investors with commission-free trading and an easy-to-use app. But its expansion has hit a wall since government pandemic stimulus payments ended, inflation began to eat into investors’ budgets and the stock market tumbled from its highs.

From Robinhood suffers harshest hangover after pandemic stock trading boom | Financial Times.

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With contributions from organizations such as Microsoft, Transmute, and SecureKey, Sidetree and DID ION have emerged as a scalable and enterprise-ready solution for anchoring DIDs. The core idea behind the Sidetree protocol is to create decentralised identifiers that can run on any distributed ledger system. DID ION is an implementation of that protocol which backs onto the Bitcoin blockchain, one of the largest and most used public ledger networks in the world.

From Adding DID ION to MATTR VII | MATTR Blog:

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The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said in a statement on Tuesday it would carry out a year-long pilot project to explore “innovative use cases and business models” for a CBDC and gain a better understanding of technological, legal and regulatory considerations.

From Australia’s central bank launches digital currency pilot | Crypto | Al Jazeera:

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The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a watchdog agency tasked with preventing sanctions violations, on Monday added Tornado Cash to its Specially Designated Nationals list, a running tally of blacklisted people, entities and cryptocurrency addresses. As a result, all U.S. persons and entities are prohibited from interacting with Tornado Cash or any of the Ethereum wallet addresses tied to the protocol. Those who do may face criminal penalties.

From Crypto-Mixing Service Tornado Cash Blacklisted by US Treasury:

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A former T-Mobile store owner has been found guilty of using stolen credentials to hack into “hundreds of thousands of cellphones” in a multiyear scheme that netted him roughly $25 million that he spent on cars and properties in California.

From Former T-Mobile store owner netted $25 million from 5-year scheme which included tricking employees into resetting passwords.

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