Banks and Institutions
With ”Project Jura”, the Banque de France and the Swiss National Bank aimed to investigate cross‑border settlement with euro and Swiss franc as wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDC). A decentralized peer‑to‑peer network of computer nodes (Corda) validates transactions while simultaneously ensuring that all legal, regulatory and business rules of governing nations are satisfied. Although the trial was successful, it does not guarantee the issuance of a wCBDC by Swiss, French or European Union authorities.
The Senate is busy setting the stage for new regulations on stablecoins, but exactly what they will look like remains to be seen. Disagreements are emerging between Republicans and Democrats on what to do. Senator Pat Toomey insisted on the fact that the legislation should address consumer protection and financial system risks, but it should also be designed to promote innovation in the rapidly changing global digital economy.
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released its long-awaited guidance on crypto, focusing mainly on the issues of money laundering. The task force adresses VASPs, broadening the definition of the activities that should be regulated. DeFi and stablecoins are also adressed, with the task force announcing that if a DeFi protocol is controlled by an entity, it should be regulated as VASP. Finally, the FAFT states that NFTs are not considered as virtual assets.
Ecosystem
Tesla and founder Elon Musk blew up Bitcoin’s price in February 2021, announcing the purchase of $1.5 billion worth of BTC. But on December 14, Elon Musk seems to want to give a gift to the crypto Dogecoin community The CEO of SpaceX has once again pummeled the price of DOGE to the moon, announcing that the crypto-joke with the friendly dog Shiba should soon allow to buy “goods” from the Tesla store. But we have absolutely no precision of which merchandise will be allowed for buying.
Nike announced on Monday that it is acquiring RTFKT, a collectables studio known for making NFTs that merge culture and gaming. Pepsi released its collection of 1,893 NFTs, only available to mint for individuals on a waiting list. Called ”The Pepsi Mic Drop genesis NFT”, this collection will include microphones, stages, accessories, and more.
The EOS community today elected to stop ongoing payments to Block.one — the company that originally designed the network. They stopped the issuance of 67 million EOS ($250 million) that was set to be distributed over the next six to seven years. The EOS Network Foundation (ENF) is now attempting to take ownership of the whole project and eject Block One.
Technology
The single largest Ethereum contract containing 8,641,954 Ether (ETH) worth $33.5 billion is the Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain staking contract launched in November 2020. At this point, and it cannot be spent without a hard fork. The terms of the hard fork could be decided once the Beacon Chain merges with the Ethereum mainnet.
The Solana network has been under strong stress again, with a decrease of more than 90% in transaction volume during a few hours. Although a DDOS attack was rumored, it is actually the lauch of an IDO and the subsequent large increase in transactions that cause a severe hit on the network. The Solana tam has released a fix but the issue once again demonstrates that Solana has performance issues under high loads.
Figures
