“You Don’t Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

At best, the investors and exchanges are people who want to reinvent finance but are underestimating its complexity. As Matt Levine says, a lot of crypto is simply repeating financial history’s mistakes. At worst, it’s rich guys teaming up with their buddies to exploit a bubble and help them buy $100 million dollar mansions. It’s time these big companies and regulators stepped to make sure the same standards and data are available to everyone. Until then, buyer beware.

Source: “You Don’t Own Web3”: A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail

Workshop on Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets | EUBlockchain

MiCA sets out to establis legal certainty, support innovation, increase consumer and investor protection, ensure financial stability and support innovation across a broad definition of the crypto-assets, crypto-asset providers and crypto-assets services market.Join the discussion on the 19th of January 2021 to follow the discussion on MiCA and its implications in the Crypto-assets markets in Europe and Beyond.

Source: Workshop on Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets | EUBlockchain

Central Bankers From Canada, Netherlands, Ukraine Call Blockchain Unnecessary for Digital Fiat – CoinDesk

“The essence of the DLT infrastructure is that no single party should be trusted enough, but don’t we just trust a central bank to maintain the integrity of the global ledger?” said Harro Boven, policy adviser in the payments policy department of the Dutch central bank. Scott Hendry, senior special director of fintech at Bank of Canada, which piloted its Jasper project (built on R3’s Corda DLT platform) last year, agreed that “you don’t need a DLT to make a central bank digital currency.” “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of benefits if you look at a DLT system and the current efficient centralized system for the sole purpose of interbank payments,” Hendry said, adding that in the back office he leads, “they wouldn’t change anything” in the technology stack currently in use. No speaker ruled out using DLT for a CBDC in principle, but none showed much enthusiasm about the tech.

Source: Central Bankers From Canada, Netherlands, Ukraine Call Blockchain Unnecessary for Digital Fiat – CoinDesk

New Blockchain Forensics Tool Developed Through French-Austrian Cooperation

The French cybersecurity company Nigma Conseil and the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) have revealed to have collaborated on developing a new blockchain forensics tool. The agreement was signed on Feb. 25 to work on e-Nigma, a proposed compliance tool.E-Nigma provides its users with a way of conducting due diligence investigations in response to Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulation. Like other similar tools, it monitors and organizes blockchain transactions.The platform provides several advanced features such as risk scoring and wallet clustering. It is able to identify addresses with real-life identities by scraping through both the clear and dark web. It builds on the open-source cryptocurrency forensics platform provided by AIT, GraphSense. AIT is a government-owned research institute headquartered in Vienna. The technology was built as part of an AIT-led program called TITANIUM, which was formed to investigate transactions in “underground markets.” The program was awarded a 5 million euro ($5.4 million) grant by the European Union to mitigate cryptocurrency crime.Fabien Tabarly, CEO of NIGMA Conseil, commented on the collaboration: “The synergy between a leading European academic research institute and our team of developers has been instrumental in implementing the most innovative tools to fight financial crime in virtual currencies.”Blockchain forensicsE-Nigma is working in a competitive field, with similar solutions being provided by companies like Chainalysis, Elliptic and CipherTrace. As money laundering regulations around the world turn more stringent, many companies in the cryptocurrency and traditional finance sectors are turning to blockchain forensics tools. Chainalysis recently announced its collaboration with both Bitfinex and Tether, helping the service provider maintain compliance.Elliptic has turned its focus on banks, with a compliance tool letting them understand the true risk from cryptocurrency exchange transactions.

Source: New Blockchain Forensics Tool Developed Through French-Austrian Cooperation

CSIRO says laws should be published in code

Commonwealth legislation should not only be published in words but in machine-readable code, which would allow it to be read not only by lawyers but also computers, a move CSIRO suggests will boost the adoption of new regulatory technology across the economy, improving compliance while reducing costs.

 

CSIRO detailed its vision for “rules as code” in a submission to the Senate select committee on financial and regulatory technology, calling for the government to think more about ‘legal informatics’, or ‘computational law’, to allow computers to help automate compliance. This would “reduce the cost of red tape and improve the quality of risk management in society,” the science agency said.

“The goal is that computer-assisted reasoning using these logics should give the same answers as judges and lawyers doing legal reasoning about the black-letter law,” CSIRO said. “When legal texts can be represented in this way, it enables the potential to build digital tools to help people to interact with the law.”

The banking industry – which has faced soaring compliance costs in the wake of the Hayne royal commission – has been wary about adopting new technologies in compliance. This has been due to the complexity of regulation, a reluctance by regulators to endorse a specific technological approach, and heavy sanctions for failures. This was evidenced by AUSTRAC’s legal actions for anti-money laundering failures at Commonwealth Bank and Westpac, which both related to failures in technology systems.

The big banks want Treasury to encourage the financial sector regulators ASIC, APRA and the Reserve Bank, “to make regtech a viable proposition in the financial services sector”.

Many start-ups, along with more established technology vendors, are developing new systems to help banks meet legal duties, including establishing the identity and background of customers, ensuring legal compliance, verification of income and expenses, and data privacy. Juniper Research expects global spending on regtech to rise from $US25 billion ($37 billion) 2019 to $US127 billion by 2024.

‘Rules as code’

CSIRO, which operates a digital innovation arm known as Data61, has detailed to the committee how a “rules as code” approach could lift compliance with various laws.

It is working with PwC on a joint venture called PaidRight to check employees’ entitlements under enterprise bargaining agreements against what they have actually been paid.

The banking industry and CSIRO are working on a project to develop a digital approach to organising climate change disclosure, which CSIRO said could be “a first step towards a nationally coordinated framework for delivery of climate information”.

The agency is also working with the building and construction industry to automatically check Computer Aided Design (CAD) models of buildings against the many building and construction regulations from the federal and state governments.

Publishing machine-interpretable rules alongside the text of legislation would “provide critical support for the regtech industry and potentially significant productivity benefits for regulated industries in Australia,” CSIRO said.

The Australian Banking Association called on the committee, which is being chaired by Liberal Senator Andrew Bragg, to recommend that Treasury “be explicitly tasked with responsibility for a growth strategy for regtech”.

Design box thinking

The RegTech Association, which represents 110 start-ups and corporates, suggested the committee call for the creation of a COAG-style forum to introduce government departments to regtech, and is encouraging government to become an “influencer, buyer, beneficiary and investor” in the space.

In its submission, the association suggests a percentage of regulatory fines paid by banks could be invested in a new ‘patient capital’ investment fund to invest in the sector, modelled on the Australian Medical Research Future Fund. It also reckons a safe harbour, or relief program, could be created to provide reporting entities attempting to deploy regtech with more confidence to adopt changes, via amendments to ASIC’s regulatory guidance.

The association also wants government to create “design box” or “sandbox” programs to accelerate testing of new technologies. It pointed to the APIX Platform, part of the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network and backed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which has created a marketplace for financial institutions to exchange ideas with fintechs on better ways of doing things.

“Australia could easily replicate this idea of a digital marketplace or partner to introduce a similar platform,” the association said.

“It could allow buyers and sellers to come together to experiment more easily, allow greater visibility over regtech solutions, help regtechs understand the current problem statements of their potential clients, and allow a ‘design box’ where negative assurance could be provided by regulators as observers. Over time the digital marketplace could also be a portal for talent and skill recruitment.”

Separately, CSIRO responded to an accusation in the submission by FinTech Australia to the inquiry which criticised Data61 for “competing directly with private enterprise for government and non-government work”. In a statement, CSIRO said it “does not seek to compete with the private sector or start-ups and where possible aims to partner with Australian organisations, to support their growth.

“Like many of CSIRO’s business units, projects for Data61, the digital innovation arm of CSIRO, are typically identified as a result of discussions with, or approaches from government, industry or academic partners, where an opportunity has been identified for our research to be applied to solve problems and create benefits for Australia.”

Source: CSIRO says laws should be published in code

Q3 2019 Cryptocurrency Anti-Money Laundering Report – CipherTrace

First, the third quarter saw growing awareness of perhaps the biggest clampdown on virtual asset transactions to ever impact crypto exchanges as well as banks and other financial institutions. After months to absorb its implications, these businesses are coming to grips with the fact that in just seven months they will need to comply with the so-called FATF funds Travel Rule. In a major challenge to business models and user privacy, among other changes this rule requires virtual asset service providers (VASPs) to securely transmit (and store) sender and receiver information whenever cryptocurrency moves. At the same time, US regulators emphasized that a similar Travel Rule which has long applied to fiat funds transfers—also applies to cryptocurrency transactions. This has left firms struggling to find a technical solution in time to avoid potentially severe penalties or blacklisting. It will no doubt have implications as regulators seek to have KYC information shared globally.The Blockchain Security Company

Source: Q3 2019 Cryptocurrency Anti-Money Laundering Report – CipherTrace

Brave New Coin

  • Earning interest on crypto asset holdings has become easier than ever, thanks to the Compound protocol and DApps like Dharma and Celsius.
  • Converting your ETH to other Ethereum tokens can be done securely and privately decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap or IDEX.
  • Hedging your cryptographic asset portfolio is now possible thanks to decentralized derivatives trading platforms, such as dYdX.
  • Insuring yourself against the failure of smart contracts has become possible thanks to Nexus Mutual.
  • Betting on the outcome of elections, sporting events or whether John McAfee’s bitcoin price prediction will come true can be done on prediction markets platforms, such as Augur.
  • Storing funds in crypto-backed stablecoins during times of extreme market volatility is now as easy as buying DAI.

DSHR’s Blog: Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

Discussions of cryptocurrencies and other blockchain technologies are bedeviled by a nearly universal assumption that attributes that are possible to achieve in theory are guaranteed to be realized in practice. Examples include decentralization and anonymity.Back in June David Gerard asked: How good a business is running a Lightning Network node? LNBig provides 49.6% ($3.7 million in bitcoins) of the Lightning Network’s total channel liquidity funding — that just sits there, locked in the channels until they’re closed. They see 300 transactions a day, for total earnings on that $3.7 million of … $20 a month. They also spent $1000 in channel-opening fees.Even if the Lightning Network worked (which it doesn’t), and were decentralized (which it isn’t), Gerard’s point was that the transaction fees were woefully inadequate to cover the costs of running a node. Now, A Cryptoeconomic Traffic Analysis of Bitcoin’s Lightning Network by the Hungarian team of Ferenc Béres, István A. Seres, and András A. Benczúr supports Gerard’s conclusion with a detailed analysis.

Source: DSHR’s Blog: Bitcoin’s Lightning Network

HSBC swaps paper records for blockchain to track $20 billion worth of assets – Reuters

HSBC aims to shift $20 billion worth of assets to a new blockchain-based custody platform by March, in one of the biggest deployments yet of the widely-hyped but still unproven technology by a global bank.

The platform, known as Digital Vault, will give investors real-time access to records of securities bought on private markets, HSBC (HSBA.L) told Reuters, and seeks to capitalize on booming interest in such investments by yield-hungry investors.

Source: HSBC swaps paper records for blockchain to track $20 billion worth of assets – Reuters