Crypto Briefs is your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
Adoption news
The Central Bank of Argentina has started promoting a proof of concept based on blockchain. According to the emailed press release, this is a decentralized system solution powered by RSK smart contract technology that would allow for end-to-end traceability of account debit claims. This system, launched within the framework of the 2019 Financial Innovation Roundtable of the Central Bank of Argentina, in partnership with The Blockchain Group, is now being tested by participating banks to determine their ability to solve process integration problems between banks and system actors, after which it will be decided whether other Banks will participate and whether other potential network uses will be defined.
Hope Bridge, one of South Korea’s biggest charities, has announced that it will launch a blockchain-powered donations platform, reports Newsis. Hope Bridge says it intends to launch a dapp (decentralized app) for donors that will help it “increase the transparency of donations” by integrating blockchain technology into existing donation processes. The charity states that its new platform will also allow peer-to-peer (P2P) donations, helping speed up the rate at which beneficiaries received donors’ funds.
Decentralized storage network Filecoin delayed its mainnet launch to the July-August window. They say in an update that the first round of its internal protocol security audit is completed, and that the results have shown a need for several changes to be made before moving to the second phase of its testnet. Therefore, the Testnet Phase 2 launch is estimated for the week of May 11, while the mainnet launch window is estimated from July 20 to August 21, they write.
Exchanges news
The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has allowed Bitnomial Exchange to operate as a designated contracts market (DCM), enabling it to offer Bitcoin futures and options contracts. The approval was granted on April 20. Besides this exchange, only CME, Bakkt, Cboe, ErisX, and LedgerX offer bitcoin futures and options contracts in the country.
HDR Global Trading Limited, operator of the BitMEX exchange, has announced a COVID-19 Response Fund. Per the announcement, the fintech company has granted USD 2.5 million towards the global effort to respond to the pandemic. Grants of between USD 300,000 and USD 1,000,000 have been given to four organisations: Gates Philanthropy Partners, Nuclear Threat Initiative (Biosecurity Program), OpenMined, and Our World in Data.
Mining news
SBI Crypto, the cryptocurrency mining arm of Japanese financial giant SBI, appears to have increased its mining share in bitcoin SV (BSV) after the token’s recent halving event, per a report from Coin Post. The report’s authors point to Coin Dance data, which shows that in the past seven days, SBI Crypto has accounted for 12% of the latest BSV mining blocks, behind only the ViaBTC and TAAL mining pools. Coin Post points out that SBI’s share “has expanded rapidly from 11.5% to 16.67% in the past week.”
DeFi News
Money on Chain, provider of a Bitcoin-collateralized stablecoin, has announced the extension of its technology to the RIF ecosystem by releasing the RIF on Chain DeFi platform backed by RIF tokens and deployed on the RSK network. Per the emailed announcement, the RIF on Chain platform will encompass three main assets that interact with each other, all three having been developed to serve different purposes: the RIF Dollar (RDOC), the RIFpro (RPRO), and RIFX.
Libra news
Global nonprofit Heifer International has joined the Libra Association as the 23rd official member. This comes after Libra altered its white paper, coming up with a new plan to please the regulators.
Securities tokens news
Ginco, a prominent Japanese crypto wallet operator, has joined the fast-growing Japan Security Token Association (JSTA) ahead of this summer’s legislative changes, which will effectively allow Japanese companies to begin engaging in securities token offering (STO)-related business activities. The JSTA was formed in late 2019 by six major securities brokerages, but its membership has expanded rapidly in recent weeks, bringing its total membership to eight “regular” members and 12 “supporting” members, per a press release. Ginco says its wallets will be STO-token compatible. Significantly, it is the first major crypto venture to join the association.
Legal news
The Blockchain Association has filed an amicus brief on Friday in the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) lawsuit against messaging app Kik in a federal court in New York. The brief urges the court to a) deny the SEC’s motion for summary judgment, in which the SEC argues that Kik’s sale of Kin tokens to the public and pre-sale contracts with accredited investors both violated U.S. securities law, and b) decide the case narrowly to avoid casting doubt on cryptocurrency projects that will appear before the court in the future, the association says in an announcement.
