Snippings

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Ever since the first high-profile libel case, when the most famous pirate in history – Captain Morgan – won £200 in damages (£40,000 today) in the 17th century for being accused of being a cruel buccaneer, our defamation laws have protected wrongdoers.

From Outrageous libel laws protected Jimmy Savile. At last, change is on the cards | Meirion Jones | The Guardian:

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Professor Eswar Prasad, writing in the MIT Technology Review on the future of money, says that “Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency that started it all, may not have much of. Role to play in this monetary future”.

 

Rather than leading to a proliferation of private and official currencies that compete on a level playing field, thedigitization of currencies could make economic power even more concentrated. If major currencies such as the dollar, the euro, and the renminbi are easily available worldwide in digital form, they might displace the currencies of smaller and less powerful nations. Digital currencies issued by large corporations, taking advantage of the companies’ already dominant commercial or social media ecosystems, might gain traction too.

 

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The real challenge is that most people around the world still have significant reason to hold dollars, given that the dollar retains its status as the global reserve currency, while few people have a good reason to hold yuan (and no one wants to hold rubles).

From The World Order Reset – by N.S. Lyons – The Upheaval:

 

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The French manufacturer of Ray-Ban glasses is suing JPMorgan for failing to stop suspicious transactions after cybercriminals looted $272 million from its New York account.

From Ray-Ban manufacturer sues JPMorgan over $272 million cyber theft:

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Spending $33 billion to buy Twitter, and then another $1 billion a year to own it, is I suppose in a way a kind of philanthropy for Musk?

From Elon Got His Money – Bloomberg:

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Work is nearing completion on proposed amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code (“UCC”) to address a limited set of transactions largely involving emerging technologies, such as virtual (non-fiat) currencies, distributed ledger technologies, and, to a limited extent, artificial intelligence. The principal amendments address so-called digital assets. The rules covering transfers of covered digital assets, including security interests in those assets, are carefully coordinated so that the transactions generate predictable and consistent results.

From The Proposed 2022 Amendments to the Uniform Commercial Code: Digital Assets:

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However, DeFi also involves the buildup of leverage, and is particularly vulnerable to market, liquidity, and cyber risks. Cyberattacks, which can be severe for traditional banks, are often lethal for these platforms, stealing financial assets and undermining user trust.

From Fast-Moving FinTech Poses Challenge for Regulators – IMF Blog.

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Central bank actions over the last century have resulted in a well-functioning banking and payment system. Why not take advantage of that, and issue tokenized deposits? While a number of practical details would need to be worked out, the principle behind tokenized deposits is straightforward. Bank depositors would be able to convert their deposits into and out of digital assets—the tokenized deposits—that can circulate on a DLT platform. These tokenized deposits would represent a claim on the depositor’s commercial bank, just as a regular deposit does.

From The Future of Payments Is Not Stablecoins – Liberty Street Economics.

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Note that domestic payments were unaffected, because Russia has spend the last eight years developing the National Card Payment System (NSPK) to process card transactions. Visa and Mastercard were forced on to these rails a few years ago, a policy that I am sure has not gone unnoticed in some other jurisdictions concerned about the position of American networks in the critical infrastructure of their economies.

(The Russian domestic debit scheme, Mir, runs on these rails too. Mir was launched in 2015 after three options were considered for the scheme — using UnionPay, opening up the Sberbank network or creating the new system.)

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On Wednesday, Russian newspaper RBC reported that UnionPay, the Chinese state–led financial services network, had suspended negotiations with Russian banks on issuing new bank cards for their customers, now unable to make purchases outside Russia as a result of Visa’s and Mastercard’s withdrawal. (Russians could still use the cards to make domestic purchases, owing to Russia’s local Mir payment system.)

The payment processor is reportedly worried about being the target of sanctions from the U.S. and other countries if it works with sanctioned Russian banks.

From UnionPay suspends negotiations with sanctioned Russian banks, reports say | Fortune.

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Central bank actions over the last century have resulted in a well-functioning banking and payment system. Why not take advantage of that, and issue tokenized deposits? While a number of practical details would need to be worked out, the principle behind tokenized deposits is straightforward. Bank depositors would be able to convert their deposits into and out of digital assets—the tokenized deposits—that can circulate on a DLT platform. These tokenized deposits would represent a claim on the depositor’s commercial bank, just as a regular deposit does.

From The Future of Payments Is Not Stablecoins – Liberty Street Economics.

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