This week has, as usual, been rich in cryptocurrency news. FTX is way down the rankings but the mood out there is still on a knife edge.
A week in cryptocurrency – Highs…Lows
As per an earlier article on Payments Cards & Mobile, multiple global banks are reported to have signed up to participate in use case proof of concepts (POCs) this month, to show how the “Universal Digital Payments Network (UDPN)”.
launched to provide interoperability between regulated stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, UDPN will integrate digital currencies into daily businesses, banking and payment.
NAB
The National Australia Bank (NAB), one of the four biggest Australian banks, has created a stablecoin called AUDN, which it aims to launch in the middle of 2023, according to the Australian Financial Review (AFR) report.
The purpose of AUDN would be to allow its customers to settle transactions on blockchain technology in real time using Australian dollars. AUDN could also be used for several other purposes including “carbon credit trading, overseas money transfers and repurchase agreements,” NAB’s Chief Innovation officer Howard Silby told AFR.
The stablecoin will launch on the Ethereum and Algorand blockchains, the latter a smart contract platform similar to Ethereum. Its a potential contender for the Universal Digital Payments Network trials as well.
Turkish Central Bank
The Central Bank of the Republic of Türkiye (CBRT) says it has run its first test transactions on the digital Turkish Lira CBDC network. The CBRT says it will continue to run limited, closed-circuit pilot tests with technology stakeholders in Q1 2023.
Following evaluation of the pilot, the central bank intends to extend the network to banks and technology companies and run architectural tests on the use of distributed ledger technologies and their integration with instant payment systems.
The Bank says studies on the economic and legal framework of the Digital Turkish Lira as well as its technological requirements will be prioritised throughout 2023.
Genesis
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep.
And God said, “Let there be cryptocurrency,” and there was. But then it went badly, as the namesake of the first book filed for bankruptcy.
Genesis was forced to place its lending unit into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, becoming the latest casualty of the fallout from the implosion of FTX last year.
Genesis’s lending business, which offered customers the ability to lend out their coins in exchange for high returns, owes creditors more than $3 billion, including hundreds of millions of dollars to customers of Gemini, the crypto exchange of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.
Genesis and its owner, SoftBank-backed crypto conglomerate Digital Currency Group, have been in negotiations with creditors since November.
The general view is that, since the collapse of FTX, market uncertainty and low trust in centralised exchanges, about 3.93 billion stablecoins have left exchanges in the last 30 days.
Within this period, cryptocurrency exchanges witnessed about $6.2 billion net outflow of stablecoin, with Binance suffering the most.
Basically the crypto winter is not yet over…there are more likely going to be many more headlines to write.
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