A library of snippets
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Ant Group, the world’s largest fintech company, has been instructed to return to its roots of facilitating electronic payments, as China’s financial regulators expressed concerns about its forays into micro loans and other financial services.
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A new practice involves Tether’s USDT, a cryptocurrency linked to the value of the U.S. dollar. The original goal of the cryptocurrency was to solve the problem of excessive value volatility. In 2019, USDT surpassed Bitcoin as the most-traded cryptocurrency on the market by volume.
USDT is widely used in money laundering, gambling and other illegal activities, an executive at a blockchain platform told Caixin.
From How illegal online gambling launders $150bn from China – Nikkei Asia:
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Many of these advertisements are posted by running points platforms, which would pay 500 to 1,000 yuan to each recruited member for their ID number, bank cards, mobile phone numbers and bank USB shield, which is a security tool that looks similar to a flash disk and acts as a shield to protect a user’s money in internet banking. If more information can be provided, such as a business license, business seal, business bank account and USB shield, the price can go up to 1,500 to 2,000 yuan for the whole set.
From How illegal online gambling launders $150bn from China – Nikkei Asia:
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At a Shanghai forum in October, Mu Changchun, the head of the digital currency research institute under the central bank, clarified the difference between the digital yuan and payment services.
“WeChat and Alipay are wallets, while the digital yuan is the money in the wallet,” Mu said.
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“If they connect my spending in e-yuan with my score in the social credit system, we will be bound to use it,” she said.
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Legal tender does not mean what you think it means
Posted on June 19, 2018
Since the dawn of Bitcoin, the phrase “legal tender” has been appearing in my Twitter feed. This morning, for example, I was surprised to read that:In Germany, Bitcoin Is Now Legal Tender
— Jason A. Williams (@JWilliamsFstmed)
June 17, 2018
No, it isn’t. Bitcoin isn’t legal tender anywhere and it never will be any more than Avios will be (and I’ve bought more cups of coffee with Avios – one – than I’ve ever bought with Bitcoin). Sorry to be a spoilsport again, but to the very best of my knowledge, Bitcoin is not legal tender in any country. Nor, I would wager, will it ever be. Legal tender is an outdated and essentially meaningless concept, which is why I am baffled by the continued discussion of it.
Who knows what “legal tender” means anyway? Pretty much no-one, in my experience. I remember a story about a schoolboy who was chucked off a Welsh bus for trying to pay with a Scottish banknote. The bus company apologised, saying that “Scottish currency is legal tender” which, of course, it isn’t. Scottish banknotes are not legal tender in England or, for that matter, Wales. Only Bank of England notes are legal tender in England and Wales. On which topic, many thanks to @anshumancrypto for pointing me to this…
I hate to spoil the joke but Scottish banknotes are not legal tender anywhere, even in Scotland. In fact, Bank of England banknotes are not legal tender in Scotland either, because Scotland (which has a separate legal system) has no legal tender law although bizarrely (and thanks to Colin Platt for this via Twitter) Royal Mint coins are legal tender in Scotland in thanks to the Coinage Act 1971 (Section 2).
From Legal tender does not mean what you think it means | 15Mb:
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‘A merchant can decline payment in Alipay or WeChat Pay, but cannot decline payment in e-yuan’
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An argument can be made, that while London TravelWatch has identified a problem — people without a bank account won’t be able to easily buy travel tickets — it has proposed the wrong solution in requiring TfL to keep accepting payment by cash.
An alternative where TfL, the GLA and local councils fix the source problem of why people haven’t taken up the option for a free basic bank account would help reduce poverty by removing the cash penalty from unbanked transactions, while also making access to public transport easier.
From People without bank accounts struggle to use London’s transport.
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digital banks have become the poster-child for fintech.
There are now almost 300 so-called “neobanks” live worldwide, with nearly half concentrated in Europe.
From The global boom in digital banks: What the data tells us | Sifted:
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Platforms like Amazon, Facebook or Alibaba incorporate more and more financial services into their ecosystems, enabling the rise of new specialized providers that compete with banks in payments, asset management, and financial information provision.
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