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The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) is completing the final testing and assurance exercises following the system upgrades and will make the DCash platform available for public use, next week.

The road to DCash has been a novel and rewarding journey though not without its challenges. In January 2022, the DCash system experienced its first interruption since its launch in March 2021.

As a result, the processing of new transactions on the DCash network was halted. This interruption was not caused by any external intervention.

From DCash Service To Resume Next Week – St. Lucia Times News.

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A Russian government report estimates that there are more than 12 million cryptocurrency wallets, where the digital assets are stored, opened by Russian citizens, and the amount of the funds is about 2 trillion rubles, equivalent to about $23.9 billion.

From Russian Bitcoin and Other Cryptocurrencies Could Be Part of Future Sanctions – WSJ:

Of course, you don’t know how many people those wallets are controlled by. After all, when that couple was arrested in New York for trying to launder a few billion dollars’ worth of stolen Bitcoin they had some 2,000 wallets to themselves. I have half a dozen that I use for different experiments, and probably a hundred more that I’ve forgotten about.

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Egypt’s government chose to expand the use of e-payments over the course of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic. Like many countries in MENA and the Global South, Egypt found itself at a crossroads at the beginning of the pandemic. Constrained by the imperative of social distancing, it took tentative steps toward more technology-enabled financial governance, particularly for social assistance programs, whose recipients largely belong to the unbanked segment of Egypt’s population. For the first time, aid was delivered by cashless transactions, including e-wallets. E-wallets are a mobile service that gives users access to their available monetary balance for cash withdrawals, transfers, payment for government services, utilities, and payment for purchases through points of sale (POS) or QR codes.

From Expanding use of e-wallets in Egypt: Strengthening the social contract one transaction at a time | Middle East Institute:

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The price of Bitcoin is thus determined not just by the supply/demand of Bitcoin, but by the supply/demand of Tether used to buy it.

From Why has the price of Bitcoin risen/fallen in the past day/week/month? – Economics Observatory.

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Currently, companies routinely transfer large amounts of personal identifiable information (PII) through a complex web of data agreements, compromising both privacy and security. But today’s technology — particularly federated learning and trust networks — makes it possible to acquire insight from data without acquiring or transferring the data itself.

From The New Rules of Data Privacy.

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Scotland has the same opportunity as El Salvador to adopt bitcoin.

From Bitcoin Is The Answer For Scotland – Bitcoin Magazine: Bitcoin News, Articles, Charts, and Guides:

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As Cory Doctorow pointed out recently, there is legislation brewing in both the US and Europe are that would force Facebook (and others) to allow third parties to “federate” new services with them. That would mean that you could quit Facebook and join a social media startup rival but still exchange messages with family and friends who remain on Facebook.

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From 2016 through 2021, Sze laundered more than $653.3 million in cash, consisting of narcotics and other illicit proceeds, utilizing a variety of financial institutions and methods. Sze routinely accepted illicit proceeds in cash and deposited the cash into financial institutions in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere, utilizing bank accounts in the names of shell companies and conspirators. Sze then further obfuscated the source of the illegal cash by purchasing official bank checks, writing personal and business checks, and making international and domestic wires to transfer the illegal cash to thousands of individuals and entities in the United States, China, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. For his services, Sze received a fee of approximately 1 to 2 percent of the cash laundered.

From 2020 through 2021, Sze routinely provided gift cards and other things of value to employees of at least one financial institution in connection with financial transactions, seeking to corruptly influence financial institution employees to provide Sze with special benefits and to avoid suspicion and reporting of his unusual financial transactions. In 2020 and 2021, Sze provided at least $57,000 in gifts to financial institution employees in connection with financial transactions, and made millions of dollars of profits in connection with such financial transactions.

From Queens Man Admits Orchestrating $653 Million Money Laundering Conspiracy, Operating Unlicensed Money Transmitting Business, and Bribing Bank Employees | USAO-NJ | Department of Justice.

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Microsoft announced in March 2021 that some of its customers could go completely passwordless, and it followed up in September by telling people to delete their passwords altogether. Those other methods of authentication? They’re finally winning.

From 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2022: The end of passwords | MIT Technology Review.

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Stablecoins might have a use case in the coming metaverse, but there is no reason to believe that each universe – Microsoft/Activision, Meta, Epic, Roblox, etc. – will agree to a single stablecoin, or that the broader, physical economy will adopt the same stablecoin for regular, real-world payments (payroll, mortgages, groceries, utilities).

From Are central banks going off the idea of CBDC?.

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