Snippings

As Ajay Banga, the executive chairman and former CEO of Mastercard, said to HBR Live recently, serving the unbanked “is not a money making strategy”

Serving the un-banked, entering emerging markets, that doesn’t seem like it necessarily will be a money-making strategy. But you made the point that you wouldn’t have pursued it if it didn’t make good business sense. So how did you make that case to shareholders?

AJAY BANGA: Yeah, well, it is not a money-making strategy. There’s still basically snet losers on financial inclusion efforts.

From CEO Series: Mastercard’s Ajay Banga on Promoting Financial Inclusion:

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his Harry & Paul sketch from 2010 is not about crypto and Tether, except it totally is: [YouTube]

From News: Everybody hates Chia, Defi100 rugpull, China versus mining, China versus crypto – Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain:

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The Iranian Presidential Center for Strategic Studies, a thinktank attached to President Rouhani’s office, has published a detailed report stressing the necessity for the regime to use cryptocurrencies to generate extra income.

Extracting cryptocurrencies, the report states, could provide economic benefits to several different sectors of the country’s economy.

From IranWire | Official Report: Iran Could Use Cryptocurrencies to Avoid Sanctions:

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Tellingly, the report also notes the capacity of bitcoin in particular to circumvent sanctions on Iran. “As the newly-extracted bitcoins are not easily traceable,” the authors state, “despite the pressure of sanctions on the country, domestic economic actors can use newly-extracted cryptocurrencies, which are preferable to existing bitcoins, on international exchanges.”

From IranWire | Official Report: Iran Could Use Cryptocurrencies to Avoid Sanctions:

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The Iranian state is therefore effectively selling its energy reserves on the global markets, using the Bitcoin mining process to bypass trade embargoes.

From How Iran Uses Bitcoin Mining to Evade Sanctions and “Export” Millions of Barrels of Oil:

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In 2019 Iran officially recognised cryptoasset mining, later establishing a licensing regime that required miners to identify themselves, pay a higher (but still very low) tariff for electricity, and to sell their mined bitcoins to Iran’s central bank. Thousands of unlicensed mining farms have subsequently been identified and shut down – including in mosques, which receive free electricity.

From How Iran Uses Bitcoin Mining to Evade Sanctions and “Export” Millions of Barrels of Oil:

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Alex “Sandy” Pentland, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

These platforms and digital currencies will reveal the values of each society: How much anonymity is there, what do you have to do to be able to unmask information, who gets to do that and under what conditions? And who should get the long-term value of the digital currency — banks? Citizens? The nation as a whole?

From How We Digitize Finance Will Reveal Society’s Values – BRINK – News and Insights on Global Risk:

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The European Central Bank on Wednesday described cryptoassets’ “exorbitant carbon footprint” as “grounds for concern”. In a paper earlier this month, Italy’s central bank said the eurozone’s payments system, Tips, had a carbon footprint 40,000 times smaller than that of bitcoin in 2019.

From Bitcoin’s growing energy problem: ‘It’s a dirty currency’ | Financial Times:

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“He used a number of methods such as creating fake email trails from customers requesting for their crypto to be sent to external wallets. These wallets were in fact controlled by [him].”

From Uphold Exec Accused of ‘Fraudulently Misdirecting’ $700K in Funds – CoinDesk:

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Ismail is alleged to have photoshopped a fake seizure order from the U.K.’s National Crime Agency (NCA) for £103,000, and also created a fake invoice for a crypto asset license from the FCA for £10,000.

From Uphold Exec Accused of ‘Fraudulently Misdirecting’ $700K in Funds – CoinDesk:

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TrueLayer, the London startup that offers a developer-friendly platform for companies, including other fintechs, to utilise open banking, is disclosing $70 million in new funding.

TrueLayer says the Series D brings the total investment to date to $142 million. The injection of capital will be used to continue scaling its open banking network, which brings together payments, financial data and identity to enable companies to build new products that improve “how we spend, save, and transact online”.

This will include further development of premium open banking-based services that go beyond simply accessing open banking APIs and will enable more innovation across financial services, including embedded finance and payments more generally.

From TrueLayer raises $70M for its open banking platform | TechCrunch:

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