Month in Review: August

Welcome to Month in Review, where the team behind STASIS and EURS shares our updates from the past month, as well as some thoughts on key issues for the stablecoin space.

The Month in Review is originally distributed each month as a newsletter. You can sign up to receive it here.

The rise of crypto-economics or summertime DeFi craze?

The anticipated changes in seasons are not always reflected in the cryptocurrency industry, a complex universe where traditional weather forecasting approaches often fail. The last month of summer was marked both by uncertainty and excitement in the digital assets field. Despite the world’s rising interest in cryptocurrencies and related services, it seems that the bullish trend has stalled for a moment. A true blue-chip of the digital asset industry, the Bitcoin, peaked at $12,500, but could not hold the line and lost it. Ethereum recovered over the $400 mark only at the very end of the month. As for other competitors, Chainlink, Polkadot, and XRP had taken the lead in the top-5 positions.

Meanwhile, DeFi continued the victorious march and overcame a $9 Billion mark milestone in August’s last days. The Decentralized Finance sector grows by leaps and bounds, and despite various opinions expressed, it seems like only a beginning for a future large-scale direction. Moreover, the DeFi crypto-asset tied to the Yearn Finance project has smashed records during the last week, overcoming the BTC as its price reached the $35.000 milestone.

At the same time, stablecoins are gaining more and more popularity in the world as the controversial leader of this niche, Tether, has overcome Paypal and Bitcoin for an average daily transfer value. The ongoing financial crisis and looming uncertainty fuel the demand for such assets. Not only dollar-pegged solutions are popular since not everyone counts wealth in USD, and many investors start to seek alternatives, such as euro-backed stablecoins.

Summing up the latest hot trends, we see that peer-2-peer trading is another direction that has experienced a tremendous increase during the last few months. Emerging markets like India have seen triple amounts of growth, and this trend is surely noticed in many other countries. Simplification of the gateway to online commerce for merchants is a lucrative opportunity that can’t be missed. Our team has enhanced the EURS API solution to provide a simply entry to digital commerce — no need to delay your engagement in global businesses as you can sell online easily now. Try our API and see for yourself!

New partnerships

In August 2020, STASIS and Gilded enabled B2B payments with euro-backed stablecoin.

STASIS has partnered with Gilded earlier in August, a company that empowers businesses to transact globally using blockchain to unlock more efficient business operations. Businesses can now transfer funds using EURS, the #1 NON-USD stablecoin. Gregory Klumov, CEO of STASIS, stated: “Stablecoins have become a major, decisive driver of crypto industry growth. By partnering with Gilded, we’re making another vital step to broaden the stablecoins acceptance and usability via the everyday payment method. We’re opening a box of stablecoin use cases, and are glad to use every opportunity for crypto euro promotion.”

Worth reading

In August 2020, STASIS CEO Gregory Klumov came up with a few opinions:

• Latest Greg’s exciting summary, The Top 5 Trends Defining Crypto in Late 2020, forecasts and evaluates various trends that are about to remain actual during the second half of 2020.
• Giving his opinion to Decrypt, Gregory stated that the benefits of CBDCs are numerous: “On-demand irreversible, immutable, auditable, almost-instant transactions. Like cash but better as the cost of counterfeiting is sky-high [and therefore] economically unviable.”
• Speaking to China Morning Post, Gregory said that in addition to stablecoins being used in many regions for capital flight, they were also accepted as a means for cross-border remittances in emerging markets. The use of stablecoins is not only efficient and relatively cheap, but the benefit of using a third currency also means it is not subject to as much pressure from government policies on either end of the transaction.

Worth watching

• Watch the latest Gregory Klumov’s talk at the DeFi Conference 2020 #DeFiConf2020: “The Future of Stablecoins.”
• In case you missed previous Greg’s Live AMA with MakerDao members — it’s the right time to fill the gaps and watch the recording on our channel.

Regulations and legal highlights

• The California’s Senate Banking and Financial Institutions committee has passed a bill seeking to define digital assets and measure its impact on the state and consumer protections. Initially seeking to define digital assets, the bill now orders for a study to look at the impact of digital assets if these were securities.
• Europe aims to introduce “historic” legislation for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in autumn. The European Union will complete new “historic” legislation on Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies this autumn. Under the new regulations, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies will be classified as financial instruments throughout Europe.
• New Bill in Germany proposes to digitize securities with blockchain. The arrival of digitized securities is one of the core aspects of the federal government’s blockchain strategy, German authorities say.
• Indian crypto P2P market size tripled despite regulatory uncertainty. Besides, the country’s DeFi sector has been gaining momentum.
• UK FCA wants to include crypto firms in financial crime reporting rules. Local financial watchdog wants crypto firms to submit annual financial crime reports to help it cement a data-led approach to regulation.

Stay tuned on More

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