A library of snippets
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Prosecutors said on Tuesday the illegal proceeds were spent on a variety of things, from gold and non-fungible tokens to “absolutely mundane things such as purchasing a Walmart gift card for $500.”
From U.S. arrests couple for allegedly laundering $4.5 bln in crypto tied to Bitfinex hack | Reuters.
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The FBI arrested a husband and wife on Tuesday morning, alleging they conspired to launder cryptocurrency stolen from the 2016 hack of virtual currency exchange Bitfinex, and said law enforcement has already seized over $3.6 billion in cryptocurrency tied to the hack.
From U.S. arrests couple for allegedly laundering $4.5 bln in crypto tied to Bitfinex hack | Reuters.
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Georg Hauer, a former general manager at N26, says: “Look at challenger banks under the hood. Their anti-money laundering (AML) and financial crime detection systems are the same as traditional banks’… These engines are so inefficient that only 1% of suspicious activity is stopped. Overall, 95% of those [accounts or transactions] flagged are false positives.
“It’s a huge problem for challenger banks… Any [other] system that has a 99% fault rate, you would kick out.”
From Neobanks’ biggest challenge isn’t growth. It’s fraud | Sifted.
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U.S. officials racing to evacuate Afghan allies have limited time before another threat comes into play: vast digital data stores that will expose Afghans’ ties to American operations on a massive scale once in Taliban hands.
Telecom companies store reams of records on who Afghan users have called and where they’ve been. Government databases include records of foreign-funded projects and associated personnel records. And stashes of biometric data like fingerprints make people easy to identify.
From ‘An enormously valuable trove’: America’s race against Afghan data – POLITICO.
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However, if Apple succeeds in widespread adoption on both the consumer and merchant side, they could in theory bypass traditional payment schemes and banking infrastructure, and process their own payments.
From What does Apple’s acquisition of Mobeewave mean for banks? – hernaes.com.
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Sex workers have written and circulated guides online on how to use crypto, but a sizable knowledge gap remains.
It is also difficult to get some customers to spend their bitcoin on adult content.
“They generally use it as a store of value,” says Stabile. “It’s a speculative currency.”
From Bitcoin a lifeline for sex workers, like ex-nurse making $1.3 million:
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Bitcoin evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos thinks that bitcoin can solve the unbanked problem.
If you’ve spent any amount of time studying the unbanked problem, you’ll know that Antonopoulos’s claim is wrong for all sorts of reasons.
From Moneyness:
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Two small private Chinese banks announced last month that they would no longer provide services involving banknotes or coins, in the latest sign that the country is accelerating its march towards a totally cashless society.
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CBDC: A Solution in Search of a Problem?
Governor Christopher J. Waller
Christopher J. Waller took office as a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on December 18, 2020, to fill an unexpired term ending January 31, 2030.
Prior to his appointment at the Board, Dr. Waller served as executive vice president and director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis since 2009.
I remain skeptical that a Federal Reserve CBDC would solve any major problem confronting the U.S. payment system.
From Speech by Governor Waller on central bank digital currency – Federal Reserve Board.
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I agree with the general sentiment here, but I would phrase it in a slightly different way: that there is no “burning platform” for a retail central bank digital currency in the United States. Appropriately-regulated private sector “stablecoins” could be used to satisfy the demands of the decentralised finance (“defi”) sector for money that can be algorithmically-traded for cryptographic assets. But it is not obvious that the long-term goals such stablecoins would be congruent with wider public policy goals around money and payments.
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In 1985, Nobel Prize winning economist James Tobin (1985) presented the case for what he called ‘segregated’ or ‘earmarked’ deposit liabilities – ‘earmarked’ for a specific purpose. He argued that one of those deposit types could be equivalent to central bank liabilities. Today, liabilities in such a segregated account would be a form of CBDC.
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Snippings