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On June 30th, 2020, the U.S. Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on the future of the digital dollar, which indicates that the digitization of the U.S. currency is being taken seriously.

Forbes reported some highlights from the hearing as follows:

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) stated, “The U.S. needs a digital dollar…The U.S. dollar has to keep earning that place in the global payments system. It has to be better than bitcoin … it has to be better than a digital yuan.”
Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) expressed concerns on regulator oversight for stable-coins.
Charles Cascarilla of Paxos testified advocating for stable-coins, stating that they address the “antiquated plumbing” of our financial system as well as financial inclusion. “Blockchain-based stable-coins allow everyone access”.
Nakita Cuttino, visiting assistant professor of law at Duke University, discussed the friction in the current payday cycle and the rising demand for costly advanced-payment apps which could be resolved with digital currencies.
Former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo and head of the Digital Dollar Project, emphasized the “social and national” benefits such as increased speed, lower costs, and issues of financial inclusion.

From The World is Moving Toward a Cashless Economy | BitBoy Crypto:

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Encouraging healthy financial behaviors. Personal finance and budgeting applications can empower consumer insights generated from consumer transaction data.

From Add new comment | CGAP:

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“Encouraging healthy financial behaviours”

This is the core of the transition from the fintech era of innovation in financial services providers to the open banking era of financial health providers which might, at last, deliver some genuine benefits to the mass market of consumers in both developing and developed nations.

 

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Overcoming lack of documentation. Onerous customer due diligence (CDD) procedures can result in high costs for low-income customers or prevent them from accessing financial services. Brazil’s open banking regime foresees a collaborative approach to CDD by allowing FSPs to share registration data. If open banking regimes expand to include telecommunications, social media or other types of data, then SIM card registration or other methods of CDD could come into play as long as simplified know-your-customer (KYC) approach is allowed.

From Open Banking: 7 Ways Data-Sharing Can Advance Financial Inclusion:

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as Malcolm Chalmers and Will Jessett of the Royal United Services Institute argue, the UK has to defend its own space first: its borders, its airspace, its cyber and energy infrastructure, and its civil society and democratic institutions.

From In a new war of all against all, the UK needs a defence revolution:

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Conflict is no longer taking place in separate spheres: a business competing with a business rival may suddenly find a state actor behind the scenes on the other side; corruption, tax evasion and organised crime are becoming politicised.

From In a new war of all against all, the UK needs a defence revolution:

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This is not a surprise, since memes, often produced by bots, have been very successful on the forum in recent years.

From OpenAI’s GPT-3 may be the biggest thing since bitcoin:

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I predict that, unlike its two predecessors (PTB and OpenAI GPT-2), OpenAI GPT-3 will eventually be widely used to pretend the author of a text is a person of interest, with unpredictable and amusing effects on various communities. I further predict that this will spark a creative gold rush among talented amateurs to train similar models and adapt them to a variety of purposes, including: mock news, “researched journalism”, advertising, politics, and propaganda.

From OpenAI’s GPT-3 may be the biggest thing since bitcoin:

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NatWest has launched an open banking-based service that lets customers of multiple lenders make instant online payments to participating retailers, without the use of a debit or credit card.

Customers who shop at participating merchants can click a Payit button at checkout and be redirected to their bank’s app or online banking page, where they log in to complete the payment. It will soon get the ability to process refunds.

From NatWest uses Open Banking for cardless e-commerce payments:

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Joshua Argires received nearly $1 million from the federal Paycheck Protection Program to help 51 employees at his “Texas Barbecue” to weather the COVID outbreak.

But according to federal law enforcement, Texas Barbecue had no employees and only a website with nothing for sale. Meanwhile, Argiries allegedly sent the $956,250 he received to an account at the cryptocurrency company Coinbase via a series of five wire transfers.

From Feds bust Texas man for using PPP loan of nearly $1 million on cryptocurrency:

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