Snippings

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So, Walmart won’t be able to create a super app in the US, right? Not necessarily. There are two reasons why Walmart’s prospects for a super app in the US are legit. Walmart has:

An underserved customer base. Practically everyone in the US shops at Walmart at some point, but the company’s core segment—non-urban, low- to middle-income consumers—is often underserved by the oligopolies dominating many industries.
A head start. Walmart may be starting from scratch in building a super app, but it has decades of experience of building an integrated, cross-industry supply chain. With the exception of Amazon, who else can make that claim (and I’m not even sure Amazon could make that claim)?
While Walmart will position a super app in terms of how it benefits low- to middle-income consumers, the company stands to benefit significantly from a successful walled garden.

From Walmart’s Fintech Arm Acquires Two Firms In Financial Services Super App Quest.

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The BEP’s cost of making money varies by banknote. For example, government figures for 2021 show production costs per note at:

6.2 cents for $1s and $2
10.8 cents for $5s
10.8 cents for $10s
11.2 cents for $20s
11.0 cents for $50s
14.0 cents for $100s

From 2022 Federal Reserve Order for Banknotes Again Ranged by Denomination | CoinNews.

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PSR remedies in acquiring

The publication sets out proposals to improve services and choice for merchants. To make sure the market works better for merchants, we are considering the following four potential remedies:

Greater transparency: to help merchants understand the pricing elements of any services they use, card-acquirers should provide summary information boxes setting out key price and non-price service elements of card-acquiring services. These should be in both bespoke form and published with general information in generic format.
Access to comparison tools: like price comparison websites, the PSR wants the industry to help stimulate Digital Comparison Tools (DCTs) for merchants so they can see whether they are getting the best deal.
Greater engagement: to help merchants know when their contracts are due for renewal, there needs to be an agreed standard of messaging by providers that will help merchants understand that their contract is due for renewal and the terms of the contract on an annual basis.
The ability to change providers easily: the PSR wants to address barriers to switching between card-acquiring services, which arise from Point of Sale (POS) terminal leases,​ by looking at potential options for merchants to switch without incurring undue cost or suffering inconvenience from having to also exchange their POS terminal. This may include the replacement of terminals by POS terminal lease providers for instance.

From CP22/1: Card-acquiring market review initial remedies consultation | Payment Systems Regulator.

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The FBI said it has also observed threat actors using malicious QR codes to download malware giving them access to a victim’s device, where they then accessed financial data to steal money.

From Surge in Malicious QR Codes Sparks FBI Alert | Threatpost.

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On Monday, a group of Belarusian politically motivated hackers known as the Belarusian Cyber Partisans announced on Twitter and Telegram that they had breached the computer systems of Belarusian Railways, the country’s national train system, as part of a hacktivist effort the attackers call Scorching Heat. The hackers have since posted screenshots that appeared to show their access to the railway’s backend systems and claimed to have encrypted its network with malware, for which they would only provide decryption keys if the Belarus government met a list of demands. They’ve called for the release of 50 political prisoners detained in the midst of the country’s protests against dictator Alexander Lukashenko, as well as a commitment from Belarusian Railways to not transport Russian troops as the Kremlin prepares for a possible invasion of Ukraine on multiple fronts.

From Why the Belarus Railways Hack Marks a First for Ransomware | WIRED.

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“El Salvador now has the most distressed sovereign debt in the world, and it’s because of the bitcoin folly,” economist Steve Hanke told Fortune. “The markets think that Bukele’s gone mad, and he has.”

From Nayib Bukele trades bitcoin naked. El Salvador is paying the price. – The Washington Post:

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I was delighted to be able to attend (albeit virtually) the presentation of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee’s report on central bank digital currency (CBDC) at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). The findings of the report were presented by Lord King of Lothbury and the discussants Jason Shepherd of TRSS International and Frances Coppola, financial economist and a columnist for Coindesk. The discussion was chaired by Tom Keatinge, Director of RUSI’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies.

While the discussions ranged over many and varied aspects of the issue, I found the most interesting discussion to be bout the private/public interface. Lord King, who wrote in his book “The End of Alchemy” that “money and banking are particular historical institutions that developed before modern capitalism and owe a great deal to the technology of an earlier age” said in essence that there was no need to the Bank of England to develop its own digital currency and that an alternative might be to simply regulate private digital currency effectively. In other words, rewrite the Electronic Money Licence and the Payment Institution Licence and leave it to the market.

I have a great deal of sympathy with this view, but I’m afraid that I ultimately disagree. It is not at all clear to me that private actors would put in place digital currencies to either maximise net welfare or meet specific social goals.

 

Lord King also referred to the American predilection to “instinctively” act extra-territorially through SWIFT.

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The definition of “electronic money” under Electronic Money Regulations 2011 (EMRs) will be extended to include fiat-linked stablecoins. As a result, holders of such stablecoins will be given a statutory right to redeem their coins on demand and at par value — as is currently the case for holders of electronic money (e.g., prepaid card or electronic wallet account holders). However, the proposals recognize that the holder of a stablecoin may not always have a relationship with the issuer. The holder’s relationship may instead be with a third party such as an exchange or wallet provider.

Accordingly, the UK government considers that holders should generally be able to make a claim against either the issuer or the customer-facing entity as appropriate. The legal requirement to allow the redemption of stablecoin on demand and at par value will remain with the issuer, but the issuer may not always be required to fulfill such requests directly. However, the Consultation Response notes that a direct obligation on the issuer may be imposed where the stablecoin carries systemic risks and direct redemption is necessary to address financial stability risks (see further below).

From UK to Regulate Fiat-Linked Stablecoins – Lexology:

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Although a relatively recent phenomenon in urban development, Chinese Contract Cities already cover 66,000 square kilometers and house tens of millions of residents. They host a wide range of businesses and have attracted huge amounts of investment. In cooperation, local government entities, private or public firms plan, build and operate Chinese contract cities.  Developers obtain land via contracts with local government or long-term leases with village collectives and enjoy revenues generated from economic activity in the planned and developed community. Residents contract a management firm for housing and other municipal services. In that way, Chinese contract cities offer innovative solutions to urban finance, planning, and management challenges. 

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Semenov downplayed any ideas that the protocol is a tool for criminals and said it’s an important mechanism to protect the safety of crypto traders as the blockchain reveals everything for all to see.

“Since all their crypto portfolio is visible to the public, the holders of significant amounts of crypto are very vulnerable to becoming victims of kidnapping, torture and blackmail,” Semenov told CoinDesk in an interview. “We think that it’s a very serious threat, and the privacy protocols are very important to ensure their personal safety. The banks don’t disclose your personal holdings to anyone who asks, and we think it should be the same way with crypto.”

From Tornado Cash Co-Founder Says the Mixer Protocol Is Unstoppable:

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The types of stablecoin-related activities that would fall within regulatory scope are further described in the HKMA’s response to discussion question 2 (page 26), and these include issuing, creating or destroying stablecoins, managing reserve assets to ensure stabilisation of the stablecoin value, and storing the private keys providing access to stablecoins

Asset-linked stablecoins

The HKMA’s attention will focus on asset-linked stablecoins (e.g., to a single fiat currency) rather than algorithm-based stablecoins at this stage,

From HKMA issues discussion paper on crypto-assets and stablecoins | Regulation Tomorrow.

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Mountain dwellers are not the only Georgians using electricity subsidies for cryptocurrency: monasteries, too, have become unlikely outposts of virtual mining. In a dump last year of security services’ surveillance files, one revelation was the extent to which the clergy had gotten involved in the crypto business.

“Since 2017, Bishop of Vani-Baghdati Diocese Anton Gulukhia owns up to 50 units of cryptocurrency production hardware,