Snippings

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They are a familiar sight on the busy streets of Djibouti: women clutching handbags bulging with dollars, euros, riyals and rupees, the money changers keeping the informal economy ticking over.
Perched on plastic chairs, feet propped on wooden steps, these “sarifley” as they are locally known are vital to the global cast of migrants, traders and soldiers passing through this tiny nation at the crossroads of Africa and Arabia.
Trading in money offers a safe, reliable way especially for women to feed their families, in a conservative country where they lag men in education and literacy.
“I have it all. Euros, English pounds, Turkish lira, dollars, Indian rupees, anything,” said Medina, who offered just her first name, flashing a purse she estimated held the equivalent of one million Djiboutian francs ($5,600/4,700 euros) in multiple currencies.
Customers and traders alike say that economic life would suffer a lot more friction without the money changers.

From Women money changers at heart of Djibouti’s street economy:

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For example, if, big tech platforms have a very different, data driven business model to banks. If they are able to better extract value from user data, they may be able to more heavily cross-subsidise their payments business.

From Do We Need ‘Public Money’? – Speech By Jon Cunliffe, Bank Of England, Deputy Governor, Financial Stability, Given at the OMFIF Digital Money Institute, London:

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After all, scientists estimate that two-thirds of the universe is dark energy, which as we all know is because advanced civilisations discovered Bitcoin before we did and that’s where all the energy has gone.

James Cunha, the Boston Fed senior vice president leading the prototype effort

“We think it’s important that we not wait for the policy debate because then we’ll be a year or so behind,” Cunha said. “This will take significant outreach to the industry and serious debate.”

From Federal Reserve’s Digital Dollar Push Worries Wall Street – Bloomberg.

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Neha Narula is the Director of the Digital Currency Initiative, a part of the MIT Media Lab focusing on cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

Our most important challenge that we need to address is to figure out how to preserve user privacy while preventing illicit activity.

From Technology Development of Digital Currency | Cato Institute:

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Banks can be expected to resist the adoption of CBDC

From Some Thoughts on Central Bank Digital Currency | Cato Institute:

Indeed but at some point they will have to wean themselves from the narcotic of CBDC and develop some actual value-added services instead of, as David Andolfatto (a Senior Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) writes, adding ridiculous toll-booths across the highways and byways of commerce.

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As Senator Carter Glass once remarked, policy should endeavor to remove all toll gates set upon the highways of commerce (Glass 1917). A basic payment system is very much like a public highway system. Sure, we could erect toll booths every five miles. We might even erect toll booths on public sidewalks, public parks, and so on. At some point, the practice of attempting to recover every nickel and dime of user cost at its source seems not only impractical, but also ridiculous.

From Some Thoughts on Central Bank Digital Currency | Cato Institute:

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Norway’s National CyberCrime Center is trying to pry open Monero and Dash—two cryptocurrencies known for their privacy-protection capabilities—amidst the search for missing person Anne-Elisabeth Hagen.

From Norwegian Police Trying to Crack Monero and Dash in Missing Person Case – Decrypt:

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Society’s response to ransomware is an example of a collective action problem. The public would be better off if everyone cooperated and refused to pay money to ransomware operators. With no incoming ransom income, the ransomware business would be unprofitable, attacks would cease and the collateral damage would stop.

From Ban All Ransomware Payments, in Bitcoin or Otherwise – CoinDesk:

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Lending money and then recouping it later, plus something extra, is economically a loan. Calling it a fee may exempt it from certain regulations, but it does not change its nature.

From A few small banks have become overdraft giants:

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