Cryptocurrency News
January 2020
Cryptocurrency news headlines reported across January 2020, spanning items across digital currency, CBDC projects and more, focusing initially on implementations, developments and projects in S & SE Asia and Oceania.
Cryptocurrency articles and headlines are also gathered from outside the broad Asia-Pacific region to provide need-to-know industry knowledge, points of reference and food for thought.
- Bitcoin is first and foremost a monetary phenomenon….The world did not need another Paypal. The world needed a new monetary institution.
- Video: Inside The Cryptocurrency Revolution, from VICE News
- Following PayPal service loss, Pornhub adds performer payment options including the tether stablecoin and recommends TRONlink wallet
- ICYMI: US Internal Revenue Service adds specific cryptocurrency question to tax filing form for the first time in 2019
- ICYMI: New York cryptocurrency preps for launch as a form of hyper-localized digital cash, running on a peer-to-peer payments platform; but not a truly distributed ledger
- From the World Economic Forum’s 50th meeting: The coming battle between surveilled and private money
- ICYMI: Central Bank of the Bahamas is piloting digital Bahamian dollar – Bahamas Sand Dollar – placing it in the race to be first digital currency by a central bank
- Decentralized finance: If you lock up bitcoin in exchange for a synthetic asset or stablecoin, is that a trade or merely a temporary reorganizing of the original asset?
- Download: Bank for International Settlements report – Impending arrival, a sequel to the survey on central bank digital currency (pdf)
- Australia: Raiz micro-investment startup preps to bring Bitcoin fund options to its user base of over 210K investors
- Decentralized finance: If you lock up bitcoin in exchange for a synthetic asset or stablecoin, is that a trade or merely a temporary reorganizing of the original asset?
- ICYMI: UK court orders Bitfinex crypto exchange to freeze bitcoin worth $860K following Chainalysis blockchain firm’s trace of funds to ransomware payment
- Cash is gradually dying out. Will we ever have a digital alternative that offers the same mix of convenience and freedom?
- China: People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, claims top-level design of national digital currency has been completed
- Download: Bank for International Settlements report – Impending arrival, a sequel to the survey on central bank digital currency (pdf)
- Australia: TAGZ crypto exchange grows user base to more than 480K active users, overtaking Binance and Coinbase as largest crypto exchange by trade volume
- Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has suggested better accommodations for digital wallets, payment services and other stored-value facilities
- ICYMI: Six blockchain and cryptoasset predictions for 2020, from KPMG
- Square payments provider, founded by Twitter CEO, secures US patent for network enabling seamless crypto-to-fiat transactions
- Huobi Indonesia adds fiat-to-crypto gateway, increasing offering to 250 cryptocurrencies
- Japan: Lawmakers are working on proposal for Japan to issue its own digital currency, potentially a joint initiative between government and private companies
- Singapore: A look at the Payment Services Act, new payments legislation offering global cryptocurrency firms a chance to expand their business in the city-state
- ICYMI: New York Inclusive Value Ledger – A Peer-to-Peer Savings & Payments Platform for an All-Embracing and Dynamic State Economy (pdf link)
- ICYMI: European Central Bank explores how a central bank digital currency could be designed primarily for payments, and to discourage use as a store of value
- ICYMI: 6 central banks form working group with Bank of International Settlements to share findings as each investigates use cases for central bank digital currencies
- ICYMI: China’s Hainan island opened its doors to foreign investment and crypto exchanges – offshore digital-asset lab, policy testing ground, sandbox?
- Hong Kong: Two Prime aims to leverage token sale model to back investments in real-world assets, using ‘Continuous Token Offering’ approach
Asia’s tech news, daily
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