Snippings

As I told my good friends at Money 20/20, we should ignore the hype and people selling pictures of chimpanzees wearing sunglasses and focus on the underlying technology of token trading transactions. The protocols of DeFi, means that the rents extracted by the financial sector can at last start to trend down. This is why the money men and women are interested: nothing to do with ideology, everything to do with intermediation. 

xxx

Federal investigators spent years hunting for clues in the 2016 hacking of the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange, when thieves stole bitcoin now worth $4.5 billion. In the end, what helped lead them to two suspects was something much more quotidian: a $500 Walmart gift card.

From A Crucial Clue in the $4.5 Billion Bitcoin Heist: A $500 Walmart Gift Card – WSJ.

xxx

xxx

“Tap to Pay” is likely to be the start of a deeper push into the merchant side of e-commerce which will provide a platform for future bets with BNPL, P2P and eventually creating a closed loop payments network.

From FATP (17/02) – What is Apple’s end game with payments?:

xxx

xxx

Apollo Global Management Inc. APO 0.57% is nearing a deal to acquire the point-of-sale terminal business of European payments company Worldline SA WLN -2.36% for close to $2.3 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

The proposed deal is the latest bet on the continued growth of digital payments.

From Apollo Nears $2.3 Billion Deal for Worldline’s Terminal Business – WSJ:

xxx

xxx

French payments services provider Worldline has launched a strategic review of its point-of-sale (POS) terminals business and has hired UBS and BNP Paribas to advise on strategic options.

The company is looking to sell the Terminal Solution & Services (TSS) unit at a valuation of €3bn ($3.5bn), Bloomberg reported.

The strategic review of the business follows Worldline’s €7.8bn ($9.2bn) acquisition of Ingenico Group.

The French firm said that the move is part of its strategy to transition from “Hardware + Service” to “Software-as-a-Service” business model.

Worldline chairman and CEO Gilles Grapinet said: “Worldline is more than ever ready to keep playing a central role in the ongoing consolidation of payments in Europe and beyond, and, as planned, we are launching the strategic review for the payment terminals business unit.

From France’s Worldline looking to divest POS terminal business:

xxx

xxx

French payments firm Worldline is in the final stages of a talk to sell its point-of-sale (POS) terminal business to Apollo Global Management, reported WSJ.

The potential deal would see Apollo buy hardware that enables consumers to make purchases using their mobile phones and payment cards, for about $2.3bn, people with knowledge of the development told the publication.

From Worldline in talks to offload POS terminal business to Apollo:

xxx

xxx

Finally, we calculate the number of physical qubits required to break the 256-bit elliptic curve encryption of keys in the Bitcoin network within the small available time frame in which it would actually pose a threat to do so. It would require 317 × 106 physical qubits to break the encryption within one hour using the surface code, a code cycle time of 1 μs, a reaction time of 10 μs, and a physical gate error of 10−3
10
−
3
. To instead break the encryption within one day, it would require 13 × 106 physical qubits.

From The impact of hardware specifications on reaching quantum advantage in the fault tolerant regime: AVS Quantum Science: Vol 4, No 1.

xxx

xxx

It’s not just the incumbent point of sale and other financial service providers who need to take notice of Apple’s announcement, but governments too

From “Tap to pay” becomes “Tap to prove” …? – new tech observations from the UK (ntouk):

xxx

xxx

In his first public comments on leaving the global anti-money laundering standard setting body after six years, David Lewis told ACAMS moneylaundering.com that there is considerable appetite both inside and outside FATF for steering national AML frameworks towards truly risk-based, intelligence-led decision-making and measurable, real-world results.

From MoneyLaundering.com :: Changes in Bank Regulations, Financial Compliance Regulations, Regulation Banks, Money Laundering Cases, Anti Money Laundering, Money Laundering Training:

xxx

xxx

On 2 June 2021, Suarez tweeted: “Check out this on the first CityCoin being of course MiamiCoin!!!!!!!!!” [Twitter]

MiamiCoin was promoted locally on banners, signs and truck billboards.

CityCoins is built on Stacks — formerly BlockStack — which is a smart contract platform built atop Bitcoin, run by Muneeb Ali. MiamiCoin is a token running on Stacks. [Stacks; CoinTelegraph]

From CityCoins — free magical money for your city! Maybe – Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain:

xxx

 

Other cities such as New York and Philadelphia are actively looking at the same or similar ideas.

(It does seem odd that these same cities are at the same time passing laws to force merchants to accept physical currency in compulsory tender, which is simultaneously an anti-competitive backstop and a stealth tax on business.)