Top Headlines
- Former executives and technicians from Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, HSBC, JP Morgan and other banking giants have joined to create crypto fund Liquibit Capital. The fund will manage assets valued at $50M (Coindesk)
- A study done by the Cambridge Centre of Alternative Finance discovered that 100M people now use crypto assets worldwide in a variety of methods (Coin Telegraph)
Cryptocurrency Spotlight:
- The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank has been “building and testing a range of distributed ledger platforms to understand their potential benefits and tradeoffs” in their efforts to consider the development of a central bank digital currency (Coin Telegraph)
- The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency released guidance earlier this week on efforts to clarify the role national banks can play in supporting stablecoin issuers. This is the first official guidance from the federal government surrounding stablecoins (Coindesk)
- US Rep. Michael Conaway (R-Texas) has proposed The Digital Commodity Exchange Act of 2020, an act seeking to hone in on the legal definition of digital commodity exchanges and to task the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with oversight (Coindesk)
- As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, The IRS plans to move the following question to the first page of their 1040 tax form: “At any time during 2020, did you sell, receive, send, exchange or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?” The question has moved from the later portions of the 1040 to the front page and is designed to warn holders of cryptocurrency that they are not complying with tax laws if they fail to declare their crypto trading and holdings (The Wall Street Journal)
International Spotlight:
- ?? The Winklevoss’s Gemini Trust Company is expanding to the United Kingdom as the company was granted an electronic-money license from the Financial Conduct Authority (Bloomberg)
- ?? The European Union has formally proposed a comprehensive regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies within the region, making the digital currencies regulated financial instruments (Coindesk)
- ?? The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has partnered with blockchain company ConsenSys to develop their central bank digital currency (iHodl)
- ?? One of China’s largest e-commerce companies has partnered with China’s central bank to support the development of a central bank digital currency. JD.com plans to support the development of a digital wallet for the currency, along with creating other applications for its use (Coindesk)