STASIS Stablecoin Digest 13.12.2019

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The Ukranian government has approved the final version of a money laundering law that will handle virtual assets and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) per FATF guidelines.

Swiss cryptocurrency financial firm Amun AG has gained permission to offer its products to retail clients in the European Union.

Denmark-based cryptocurrency users have begun receiving letters from the Danish tax agency, Skattestyrelsen, requesting that traders provide a full background of all their cryptocurrency transactions, sources informed Cointelegraph on Dec. 10.

The Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) warned the country that Switzerland is particularly prone to money laundering risks for reasons including the use of blockchain technology.

An institution of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), is about to hire ex-People's Bank of China (PBOC)'s central bank digital currency (CBDC) research executive Qian Yao.

A new bill aimed at adding clarification to the budding stablecoin market could see some serious opposition from the cryptocommunity. The bill dubbed the “Managed Stablecoins are Securities Act of 2019 H.R. 5197″ was introduced to regulators last week. The goal of the new legislation is to amend the statutory definitions of the term security to include managed stablecoins.

“Regulation cannot ever be “one-size-fits-all”. Regulators worldwide, need to be ever-vigilant, coherent, multi-lateral and current in their approach. But it should be to no one’s surprise that in regulating cryptocurrencies, regulators when independent, will act in self-interest if not with a clear understanding of the unique national legal frameworks in countries and regions.”

The Maker Foundation has announced a series of governance polls aimed at security after software developer Micah Zoltu explained how any hacker with $20 million at their disposal could stage an attack on the MakerDAO network and steal close to $340 million.

Payments company Circle has reportedly laid off another ten employees, following the news that its CEO Sean Neville quit his position — events that the firm says are unlinked.

One of the biggest cryptocurrency stories in the second half of 2019 was the MakerDAO project’s high-profile upgrade of the Dai stablecoin in November.

That upgrade saw the stablecoin evolve in numerous ways, namely through a rebrand and with the introduction of new smart contracts that enabled a Dai Savings Rate (DSR) and the Multi-Collateral Dai (MCD) system.

Although almost all of the stablecoins had a huge deviation from the peg in the first half of 2019, it was reduced by a huge factor in the second half with the exception of GUSD. TUSD recorded the highest positive surge on 28 April, where 1TUSD was worth $1.04165. With 1 GUSD reaching about $0.98306, it was the only stablecoin whose peg collapsed the highest against the collateral.

“Banks may be caught off-guard by fintech activities. An alliance between traditional banks and new digital industries is essential. A structure that incorporates new techniques but maintains old values.”

Distributed ledger technology, colloquially termed “blockchain,” is making a bold promise to help bring the trade industry into the digital age. To help shed light on the intricate workings of the technology and the role that it is playing in the international trade industry, Trade Finance Global partnered up with the World Trade Organization earlier this month to produce a 56-page report titled “Blockchain & DLT in Trade: A Reality Check,” endorsed by the International Chamber of Commerce.

In an analysis dedicated to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) released on Dec. 10, the Bank of Lithuania argued that banks should participate in the digital asset space in order to gain experience with the rapidly developing asset class.

The president of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, said that the financial institution should be ahead of the curve regarding the demand for stablecoins.

Decentralized finance, or DeFi for short, is what the Ethereum community calls financial smart contracts, decentralized applications (DApps), and protocols built on Ethereum. 1. What is a decentralized exchange? 2. The fundamental of peer to peer lending platform?

China is at last planning to conduct the first real-world test of its central bank digital currency (CBDC), fresh reports claim.

According to local news outlet Caijing on Dec. 9, the initial pilot for the CBDC is set for the city of Shenzhen before the end of 2019, and may possibly include the city of Suzhou.

The Bank of Lithuania announced it is exploring the possibility of issuing a collectible digital coin based on cryptos’ underlying technology, the country's central bank has announced through a press release.

The adoption rate of blockchain technology in China continues to impress as the Bank of China has reportedly issued 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) in blockchain-based special financial bonds for small and micro-enterprises.

BitPay cryptocurrency processing service has added support for stablecoins USD coin (USDC), gemini dollar (GUSD) and paxos standard token (PAX).

The digital assets custody service being developed by ING is purportedly part of one of the bank’s several blockchain-related initiatives and is still at an early stage of development. ING reportedly said that it “sees increasing opportunities with regard to digital assets on both asset backed and native security tokens.”

According to a press release, Binance has just teamed up with the p2p crypto trading platform Paxful to add the fiat currencies offered by the platform to its payment gateway.

Uphold, a digital money platform providing access to investments and payments using blockchain technology, has announced a partnership with crypto-backed lending company Salt. Together, the two plan to provide users with cash or stablecoin loans using cryptocurrencies as collateral.

SGA, the basket-backed stablecoin envisioned last year by the Saga Foundation, is a long-term play tailoring to two very different goals of the crypto market: being a (relatively stable) store of value and a free-floating asset all its own, according to Ido Sadeh Man, founder & chairman at the foundation.

Instacoin, a crypto ATM operator in Canada, announced Wednesday that it is offering seven stablecoins — including the controversial tether — throughout its network.

The other six stablecoins the firm is offering include multi-collateral DAI, single-collateral DAI, USD coin, paxos standard, trueUSD and gemini dollar.

Africa’s first stablecoin, the Africa Stable-Coin(ABCD) is backed by Nigeria’s national currency, the Naira. Also, the fiat-backed crypto is built on Binance’s native blockchain, the Binance Chain.