A library of snippets
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After a few months, I received a notice from Stripe that my sales violated their terms of service, as my tarot work seemed to fit into their broad category of “psychic services” and was therefore considered a restricted, “high risk” business.
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Many national governments around the world are showing themselves to be inefficient and slow-moving in response to long-running problems and rapid changes in people’s underlying needs. In short, many national governments are missing live players. Even worse, many of the outside-the-box political ideas that are being considered or implemented for national governance today are honestly quite terrifying. Do you want the USA to be taken over by a clone of WW2-era Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar, or perhaps an “American Caesar”, to beat down the evil scourge of American leftism? For every idea that can be reasonably described as freedom-expanding or democratic, there are ten that are just different forms of centralized control and walls and universal surveillance.
Now consider local governments. Cities and states, as we’ve seen from the examples at the start of this post, are at least in theory capable of genuine dynamism. There are large and very real differences of culture between cities, so it’s easier to find a single city where there is public interest in adopting any particular radical idea than it is to convince an entire country to accept it.
From Crypto Cities:
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A man has described his shock at returning to his house and finding it stripped of all furnishings after it was sold without his knowledge… A BBC investigation found Mr Hall’s identity had been stolen and used to sell the house and bank the proceeds.
From Luton man left shocked as his house is ‘stolen’ – BBC News:
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Banks and other financial firms in the U.K. are filing more Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) than ever before, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) indicated in a press release emailed to PYMNTS on Monday (Nov. 1).
From FCA: Surge in Banks Filing Financial Crime Reports | PYMNTS.com:
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Senator Pat Toomey, ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, says he’s not on board with the Biden administration’s proposal to regulate stablecoin issuers as banks, as Capitol Hill moves to adapt existing securities law to accommodate the booming cryptocurrency sector.
The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets earlier this week recommended that Congress come up with a new framework to regulate stablecoins, urging lawmakers to mandate that only banks can issue stable coins.
When asked by Yahoo Finance whether he supports the administration’s proposals, the Pennsylvania Republican acknowledged one of the proposal’s central arguments: that Congress needs to act.
However, his remarks presaged what is likely to be a spirited debate about cryptocurrency regulation, highlighting how lawmakers have found little consensus on how to proceed.
“It is not at all obvious to me that the optimal outcome is to treat all stablecoin issuers as though they’re banks, or force them to become banks,” Toomey said in an exclusive interview.
From Sen Toomey blasts stablecoin bank idea as crypto regulation debate heats up:
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Despite the incredibly convincing passages of text it can churn out, GPT-3 doesn’t do anything really new.
From Why GPT-3 is the best and worst of AI right now | MIT Technology Review:
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In this country, the Secret Service continues to bay after Mr. Boggs, and he has taken to seeking relief-so far in vain-from a series of appellate courts. With the Government’s philistine bureaucrats in pursuit, the value of his work in the art market rises higher and higher. Meanwhile, the artist has found an ingenious way to meet his legal expenses, which have mounted to some $900,000. He prevailed upon the chief master engraver at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington-the man who created the image of Andrew Jackson on the new $20 bill-to do a money-scale engraving of J.S.G. Boggs himself. And he has used this engraving to make eight $100,000 drawings-true Boggs bills-which his lawyers are glad to accept for services rendered. Thus does Lawrence Weschler’s Comedy of Values leave us with a truly comic prospect: that of an endless legal battle in which both sides can cover their costs ad infinitum simply by printing fresh money.
From What Is Art? What Is Money? Amusing Answers Below | Observer:
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Research commissioned by Railsbank has uncovered a demand for new and improved financial experiences and better rewards from consumers. It found that 39% of consumers are interested in accessing financial services like credit, loans, or investments from brands they trust.
From Railsbank launches Embedded Finance Experiences – ThePaypers:
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This half term, share your favourite things with us by designing a banknote which celebrates them. This might be a person, a hobby, a food, a pet – anything that makes you smile!
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The notes designed by the children looked real to me. Since the Bank went over to plastic notes that all look fake to me, I couldn’t tell a real £50 note from a counterfeit one anyway.
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The report estimates that of the nearly $24 trillion in wholesale payments that moved across borders each year, global corporates incur more $120 billion1 in total transaction costs; this excludes potential hidden costs in trapped liquidity and delayed settlements.
From J.P. Morgan releases Unlocking $120 Billion Value in Payments report:
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$120 billion is half a percent of $24 trillion. JP Morgan reckon that using digital currency they can drive down this overhead from around 50 basis points to under 20 basis points. What struck me as interesting about their view of the “mCBDC” (multi-currency CBDC) model was that is still involves banks. As the Oliver Wyman report on which these numbers are based actually states, the reduction of 80% in costs “assumes at most one correspondent bank will continue to be utilized to facilitate cross-border payments”.
Why one bank? Why not no banks? Surely if Company A in the UK wants to pay company B in France, they will draw down euros into their Corporate Euro Purse (or whatever, I just made this name up) and send the euros over the internet to company B’s Corporate Euro Purse.
An alternative view is not that business wants is a wholesale CBDC to be exchanged between banks but rather a specific form of what the German Banking Industry Committee (GBIC) call as “industrial CBDC” designed to be exchanged between companies.
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In the June 2019 Guidance (§113), VA transfers between VASP and non-obliged entities were not within the scope of TR requirements. From now on, Travel Rule requirements apply to transactions with non-obliged entities (such as unhosted wallets), but with adaptations. This means that for VASPs to apply the right process, they need to determine whether the transaction is with a VASP or with an unhosted wallet in the first place.
From 12 Outcomes from FATF’s Oct 2021 Updated Guidance for Virtual Assets and VASPs:
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Snippings