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The US government issued emergency legislation on Sunday after the largest fuel pipeline in the US was hit by a ransomware cyber-attack.
The Colonial Pipeline carries 2.5 million barrels a day – 45% of the East Coast’s supply of diesel, petrol and jet fuel.

From US passes emergency waiver over fuel pipeline cyber-attack – BBC News.

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n addition, the U.S. has also occasionally imposed secondary sanctions, which authorize the President to forbid U.S. companies from transacting with non-U.S. companies that themselves transact with a sanctions target.  It is a nice power to have, but it has created significant friction, particularly with our European allies.  While there are no signs that it will lead the world to abandon the dollar in favor of the yuan or the euro or some other currency, for those who worry about such things, this looks like a more potent threat than whether a dollar cross-border payment clears in a second versus an hour versus a day.

So, for those concerned about the threat of China economically and militarily, perhaps it’s better to spend time and resources building a strong economy, maintaining fiscal discipline and working more closely with our allies on sanctions policy, rather than hastily developing a new form of U.S. currency.

From The Dollar, the Yuan, and CBDCs: What Talks, What Walks – Bank Policy Institute.

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A Treasury Department unit aims to tap commercial, online tools for tracking virtual currency transactions, such as those involving Bitcoin, recorded on a blockchain.

Within its Office of Foreign Assets Control or OFAC, which carries out economics- and trade-based sanctions, is the Office of Global Targeting, or OGT. That group captures intelligence on and builds cases against individuals, entities or organizations that might appear on the Specially Designated Nationals List and generally blocked from conducting business with Americans.

According to a recently published sources sought notice, OGT wants vendor-provided solutions to analyze and track blockchain-based transactions to gather attribution information on involved parties that are under consideration to be put on the SDN List. Entries on that list have generally been formally deemed detrimental to U.S. national security.

From Treasury Office Seeks Tools to Trace Cryptocurrency Linked to Sanctions List – Nextgov.

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The researchers conclude that these scraps were being used as money, and that the fragmentation of bronze objects was aimed at obtaining ‘small change’ or cash.

From Scrap for cash: Bronze Age witnessed revolution in small change across Europe.

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The Internet is good at transmitting every kind of information from anyone to anyone else, except money, and money is the high-order bit.

From Stripe and Solid-State Economics – The Diff:

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Twitter has launched a new “tip jar” feature that lets people send money to others on the social network.

From Twitter adds ‘tip jar’ to pay for good tweeting – BBC News:

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“Issues such as failed transactions and front-running are not subtle, costing users millions of dollars every day,”

From Analysis: Cryptocurrency ethereum is flourishing but risks linger | Reuters:

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Open account trade, where transactions are handled but not financed by a bank, is identified by the GAO as a “primary vulnerability”. Though banks carry out standard anti-money laundering (AML) and due diligence checks, and are required to report any suspicious activity detected, payments are usually handled automatically and with “limited visibility into the underlying reason”, it says.

“Banks generally do not review documentation such as invoices, bills of lading, or customs declarations in open-account transactions – as would be the case for transactions that are financed by the bank and where the bank is exposed to greater financial risk.”

From Trade-based money laundering a growing risk, US government told | Global Trade Review (GTR):

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The multiplication of private digital currencies and the potential for CBDC make all too clear the necessity of creating a global framework. More specifically, it shows the need for regulation to ensure that all these initiatives promote financial inclusion, security and consumer protection, efficiency in domestic and cross-border payments and broad resilience of the payments landscape.

From The Promise and Peril of Digital Currency in a Global Economy – Milken Institute Review:

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govcoins could cut the operating expenses of the global financial industry, which amount to over $350 a year for every person on Earth. That could make finance accessible for the 1.7bn people who lack bank accounts.

From :

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