A library of snippets
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he digital yuan hard wallet resembles a conventional smart card and allows users to store and make contactless NFC payments with the digital currency without needing to use a digital wallet on a mobile phone.
A small screen embedded in the card enables them to view their card balance and payments record.
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Our letter removes any legal uncertainty about the authority of banks to connect to blockchains as validator nodes and thereby transact stablecoin payments on behalf of customers
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There is a demand for a non-intermediated, direct payment asset, and crypto can serve that function. That is why stablecoins, such as crypto assets pegged to the dollar, have proven of enduring interest.
From Bitcoin Hits New High, But Cryptocurrency’s Future Is Uncertain – Bloomberg:
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okens offer “out of the box” functionalities that strongly support the transaction of digital values. They enable instant and atomic exchanges, creating new possibilities to conduct delivery versus payment (DvP) and payment versus payment (PvP) transactions. Tokens are expected to be the standard for payments in the internet of things (IoT) and other machine-based applications.
From CBDC and Technology: Enabling blockchain to drive change | Accenture Banking Blog:
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The business of buying and selling dollars has also flourished, and low-denomination bills are worth more.
Maria Briceno, a cigarette street vendor in Maracaibo, the second-largest city in Venezuela, sells any $1 and $5 dollar bills she earns to other businesses.
“I collect the $1 dollar bills and go to the market, and for $17 of $1 notes, they give me a $20 dollar bill,” Briceno said.
From Dollar’s growing dominance in Venezuela leaves locals ‘short-changed’ | Reuters:
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China’s regulators are trying to get Jack Ma to do something the beleaguered billionaire has long resisted: share the troves of consumer-credit data collected by his financial-technology behemoth.
From Chinese Regulators Try to Get Jack Ma’s Ant Group to Share Consumer Data – WSJ:
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Martin Kearsley, Post Office banking director, said the joint branches initiative would help make banking as important to the company as its traditional mail and parcel business. He added that it had “a social and moral responsibility to focus on cash and banking as one of our main strategic pillars”.
From Post Office leads drive to preserve UK access to cash with banking hubs | Financial Times:
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A gang of robbers stole bitcoin valued at more than HK$3 million from a trader on Monday, luring him to meet for the transaction and then kicking him out of the car on a Hong Kong hillside.
The robbers fled with HK$3 million (US$387,000) in cash that they had pretended to pay their victim, but took back later when 15 bitcoin worth about HK$235,000 each were transferred.
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And it will, definitely, happen. Just as one of the first uses of the modern computer (the Bletchley Park Bombe) was to break the symmetric key cryptography used by the Nazi military (Enigma and all that), so one of the first uses of a quantum computer will be to break the public key cryptography used by the military, government, bank, pharmaceutical and other systems in place today. But note the implication: breaking the codes will not simply mean that banks won’t be able to use it to exchange messages in confidence in the future but that all data encrypted using public key cryptography since it was invented (in the 1970s) will become visible.
From Schrodinger’s cash:
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National banks and federal savings associations can use public blockchains and stablecoins for settlement, The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) said in an interpretive letter published late Monday.
The letter indicates that banks and savings associations can now run crypto nodes and utilize associated stablecoins for “permissible payment activities.” This means banks can use public blockchains to validate, store, record and settle payment transactions as long as they’re compliant with existing laws.
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