A library of snippets
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Foreign investors, concerned about the future of an IMF deal they see as key for the Central American country, have demanded increasingly higher premiums to hold Salvadoran debt.
From IMF sees legal, economic issues with El Salvador’s bitcoin move | Reuters:
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High income earners are more likely to never have paid an ATM surcharge.
From Canadian Attitudes Toward ATM Surcharges by Household Income: |:
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According to the annual Global Payments Report by Worldpay from FIS, which examines current and future payment trends across 41 countries, the use of mobile wallets exceeded cash for the first time in in-store payments worldwide last year. Cash usage dropped 10 percentage points in 2020 to account for just one-fifth of all face-to-face payments worldwide.
From Have contactless cards cut down the flow of cash? – Tech Wire Asia:
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Today, any Accredited Data Recipient can, with the consent of the consumer, access banking data held by a participating bank. This data doesn’t have to be used for banking products. As an example, energy companies or telcos could use CDR data to identify vulnerable customers and offer support to them.
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You might also be asking yourself whether access to financial services couldn’t be improved by trying a less risky fintech idea like, say, mobile money (real money) but again, we’re afraid we are also none the wiser.
From El Salvador’s bitcoin bill is still keen on king dollar | Financial Times:
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As far as I understand it, everyone using LN in El Salvador has primarily been using Strike. Classic crypto conundrum in that they had to centralize to get it to work. There is a Twitter thread with the CEO where he shows they had to block their software using most non Strike LN nodes because there were so many failed payments.
From Austin Vernon on El Salvadoran bitcoin acceptance, from my email – Marginal REVOLUTION:
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DeFi is not a single product or company, but is instead a set of protocols that are enabling technology to provide services across financial services, ranging from payments, lending & borrowing, trading, insurance, derivatives, and security permutations. These services are offered via decentralized applications (“Dapps”), these DeFi Dapps enable both builders & users to combine their services, offering various degrees of composability that’s just not feasible in a centralized financial ecosystem.
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the U.S. government sees digital identity as a back-burner issue. The United States needs to start treating identity as core to national securit
From Digital Identity Is a National Security Issue – War on the Rocks.
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The federal government should create a Digital Identity Center to work with the private sector and state and local governments to rapidly identify and support new digital identity technologies. Doing so would strengthen America’s cyber security posture and advance the country’s counter-intelligence interests. The center should be arm’s length to the government, allowing for independence, global exposure, and flexibility to meet new challenges. Within the federal community, those entrusted with leadership positions should make use of such a center to adopt an entrepreneur’s mindset.
From Digital Identity Is a National Security Issue – War on the Rocks.
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Under the new Regulation, Member States will offer citizens and businesses digital wallets that will be able to link their national digital identities with proof of other personal attributes (e.g. driving licence, diplomas, bank account). These wallets may be provided by public authorities or by private entities, provided they are recognised by a Member State.
From Commission proposes a trusted and secure Digital Identity:
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Major platforms, like Amazon, Google, or Facebook, will also be required to accept the use of the EU digital identity wallets upon request of the user – for example, to prove their age.
From First glimpse of EU’s new ‘digital identity wallet’:
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Another big question mark thrown up by the commission’s e-ID plan is how exactly the envisaged certified digital identity wallets would store — and most importantly safeguard — user data. That very much remains to be determined, at this nascent stage.
From Europe wants to go its own way on digital identity | TechCrunch:
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By using the European Digital Identity, the user only has to select the necessary documents that are stored locally on his digital wallet to reply to the bank’s request. Then, verifiable digital documents are created and sent securely for verification to the bank, who can then continue with the application process.
I have to say, I’m not sure about this. In my head, the digital ID wallet and the document vault are different things.
“Entrusting our digital lives to the government instead of Facebook and Google is jumping out of the frying pan into the fire,” said MEP Patrick Breyer from the Greens/EFA group.
“Bringing all data and documents together in one repository creates the danger of hacks and identity theft,” he added.
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“This just feels like a bad idea . . . in effect, El Salvador will have two currency regimes operating in the country with control over none of them,” said Bipan Rai, currency analyst at CIBC.
From El Salvador becomes first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender | Financial Times:
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Snippings