Alpaca Finance Institutional Newsletter #9
Governments around the world are fixated on the fight over stablecoin payment superiority and issuance control. While to most crypto natives, it seems the crackdown is an effort to slow down the pace of emerging technologies, in reality, it’s more likely that it’s about monetary control in a rapidly changing world.
This week, the Bank of China reported that the digital yuan has seen $14B of transaction volume. At the same time, the Bank published a research report from a state-owned think tank about an Asian, 13-currency basket digital currency. This new Asian Yuan would attempt to set the groundwork for usurping the USD’s position as a global reserve currency.
Trends in cross-border stablecoin payments, such as the surge of usage in Russia after Western sanctions, highlight how decentralized networks at large adoption curves could drastically change the payment landscape. Similarly, JPMorgan began a partnership with Visa to leverage their “blockchain-based” cross-border payment products to potentially take on SWIFT. Headlines such as these paint a much larger picture, a visage of the worldwide pushes and pulls, which are operating within the backdrop of the decentralized technologies powering the next major innovation in finance.
News
- Bank of China: Digital yuan transactions volume crossed $14B mark
- Russian stablecoin usage surged after Ukraine invasion
- China floats idea of the ‘Asian yuan’ to reduce reliance on US dollar
- JPMorgan and Visa team up on cross-border blockchain payments
Regulation
- US lawmaker says crypto regulation from SEC is ‘needed now’
- Blockchain.com gets regulatory nod from Singapore’s central bank
- Coinsquare becomes first Canadian crypto exchange to receive IIROC registration
- OECD releases framework to combat international tax evasion using digital assets
Products
- BNY Mellon, America’s oldest bank, launches crypto services
- Google taps Coinbase to bring crypto payments to cloud services
- Multiverse Labs launches government-backed metaverse city in UAE
- Japanese gaming giant’s hiring spree ahead of NFT marketplace
Funding
- Blockchain games and metaverse projects raised $1.3B in Q3
- Uniswap Labs raises $165M as attention shifts to NFTs, Web3
- Nxyz raises $40M to enable faster blockchain indexing
- Crypto and digital bank MinePlex secures $100M in funding from GEM
