Snippings

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One such addition to be taken from the private sector is the leveraging of existing private sector standards and infrastructure – such as anti-money laundering (AML) and open banking – to minimise the cost of implementation.

There is no need for the creation of new identities – existing identities authenticated to AML standards are already established with banks and can be reused. What’s more, using such systems means almost entire market coverage from day one, with 97% of the adult UK population immediately having access through their own bank account.

From The practical steps needed to accelerate a UK digital identity ecosystem.

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One such addition to be taken from the private sector is the leveraging of existing private sector standards and infrastructure – such as anti-money laundering (AML) and open banking – to minimise the cost of implementation.

There is no need for the creation of new identities – existing identities authenticated to AML standards are already established with banks and can be reused. What’s more, using such systems means almost entire market coverage from day one, with 97% of the adult UK population immediately having access through their own bank account.

From The practical steps needed to accelerate a UK digital identity ecosystem.

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According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC’s) most recent report, 7.1 million households (5.4%) in the United States fit the definition of unbanked. The same holds true for 14 million individuals, or 5.5% of the adult population.

While these numbers are staggering, they actually reflect a downward trend in the number of unbanked households and individuals in the U.S. In fact, they represent the lowest level of individuals and households without a checking or savings account since the FDIC initiated its unbanked study over a decade ago.

From Banking the Unbanked: How to Become Part of the Solution.

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The federal government struggled to get stimulus funds into the pockets of the nation’s unbanked during the pandemic. In a recent PaymentsJournal article, Mercator Advisory Group Director of Debit and Alternative Products Advisory Service, Sarah Grotta, discussed this issue.

“Much has been written in the popular media about how difficult it has been to distribute stimulus funds to all eligible recipients quickly. There are two central reasons for this: a) individuals do not trust the federal government with their checking account credentials that could facilitate a fast and safe direct deposit of funds, and b) they don’t have an account,” she wrote.

From Banking the Unbanked: How to Become Part of the Solution.

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Opening of new cryptocurrency accounts may slow in the second half of this year as the Anti-Money Laundering Office (Amlo) announced local digital exchanges must verify their customers’ identities through a “dip-chip” machine that requires clients to be physically present.

From ID check required for new crypto accounts.

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Testimony before the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission

Panel 4: China’s Pursuit of Leadership in Digital Currency

A Statement by
Martin Chorzempa
Senior Fellow, Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics

 

Martin, who kindly references my book “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin” in his testimony, wisely presents

Finally, Congress should discourage overuse of financial sanctions in a way that might convince
not only pariah states like Venezuela and North Korea, but US allies like the European Union, to
undergo the massive international effort, cost, and inefficiency involved in creating an
alternative, sanctions-proof set of financial infrastructure and currency arrangements. My
colleagues have found that US sanctions have historically only had even partial success at
achieving the US’ foreign policy goals (Hufbauer et al 2009). Overuse of sanctions would
“weaken the international role of the dollar” (Schott 2021) and likely represent a much greater
risk to the dollar’s dominance than any new form of the already digital RMB.

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Beijing also hopes, analysts say, to use the digital renminbi as a means to reassert state control over its fintech industry and a vast e-payments market that is dominated by two huge private companies, Ant Group and Tencent. The technology could in effect become a rival to their cashless payments platforms.

From Virtual control: the agenda behind China’s new digital currency | Financial Times.

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A forward-leaning digital identity framework is necessary to support robust and inclusive economic infrastructure. It is important to anchor national efforts around common principles and coordinate disparate efforts, which might include: sharing information derived from specific initiatives; researching and promoting standards; organizing information and education campaigns to drive adoption; hosting techsprints or other events that leverage private sector innovation; and recommending specific legislative or regulatory change. A national framework can help organize and catalyze an otherwise fragmented digital identity effort subject to collective action challenges.

The importance of this effort cannot be overstated. As we emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, we have an opportunity to rebuild the economy by reshaping our identity framework in ways that give us access to better and more equitable financial technology innovations.

From The U.S. Digital Identity Crisis | The Regulatory Review.

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I can’t tell you how many times I have unthinkingly used the example of fake Portuguese passports to illustrate points about identity fraud.

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He’d previously been linked with a false passport carried by a man suspected of illegally smuggling migrants into the UK.

A search of his Battersea home revealed that he’d set up his attic as a dedicated workspace for the production of counterfeit passports of various European nationalities, including French, Belgian and Portuguese.

From Man made ‘hundreds’ of false documents in Battersea attic | Wandsworth Times.

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Neville Maskelyne was a British music hall magician who had already undertaken some telegraph experiments. He was keen to see whether Marconi’s system was truly as groundbreaking as he claimed. The Eastern Telegraph Company’s tasked Maskelyne, to set about the business of breaking into the secure communications. He started his task by building a 50 metre radio mast on the cliffs of Porthcurno to see if he could intercept Marconi’s company messages being sent to vessels at sea. He succeeded quite easily and soon realised that without tuned equipment it was relatively easy to intercept a signal without anyone knowing.

From Hacking at the Royal Institution | The Royal Institution: Science Lives Here:

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Responding to the recent hack of IT company SolarWinds, the New York State Department of Financial Services says that the next big financial crisis could come from a cyber attack.

During the SolarWinds break-in, hackers corrupted routine software updates that were downloaded onto thousands of organisations’ information systems.

“This incident confirms that the next great financial crisis could come from a cyber attack,” says superintendent of Financial Services Linda A. Lacewell. “Seeing hackers get access to thousands of organisations in one stroke underscores that cyber attacks threaten not just individual companies but also the stability of the financial industry as a whole.”

From NYDFS: SolarWinds hack is a harbinger of the next big financial crisis:

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A mobile app developed by the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, which has been sanctioned in the U.S. for human rights abuses, has disappeared from Apple’s U.S. and China App Stores.

From Briefing: App Made by Blacklisted Chinese Group Disappears From Apple App Store — The Information:

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