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Hong Kong Brokers Seek SFC Clearance Before Virtual Asset Trading Law

by Blockchain NewsJanuary 4, 2023

Companies that offer financial services in Hong Kong are reportedly already undertaking the preliminary preparations necessary to offer their goods and services to individual retail investors, as reported by the regional media.

It has been asserted that brokers and fund managers in the region have made inquiries about the essential help on the licensing requirements in preparation for the new regulations.

The Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorist Financing Ordinance in Hong Kong was revised during the month of December 2022 by local legislators (AMLO). The legislature has given its approval to this change, which is in line with the existing attitude of the region regarding the broadening of opportunities for trading cryptocurrencies.

Because the amendment creates a new licensing structure for virtual asset service providers, it will now be possible for individual investors to participate in the trading of virtual assets as a direct result of the amendment. At current time, the buying and selling of digital assets is restricted to only experienced investors and traders who can demonstrate that they have at least one million dollars worth of bankable assets in their possession.

Victory Securities and Interactive Brokers were the first two brokers in Hong Kong to receive approval from the SFC to trade digital assets for the professional customers of their respective firms.

Consumers who are interested in trading Hong Kong-listed exchange-traded fund futures that are based on Bitcoin do not require a specialist license at this time in order for Hong Kong-based brokers to be able to provide services to those customers. However, businesses who want to offer trading in virtual assets will need additional authorisation from the SFC in order to do so.

The first of March of this year was supposed to mark the beginning of the implementation of the new licensing criteria.However, in order to provide businesses who provide services for virtual assets additional time to adequately prepare, the deadline has been pushed back to the 1st of June.

This comes as a direct outcome of the recent selection of Julia Leung to fill the position of chief executive officer at the SFC.She has already stated that she is in favor of tightening the stringency of the laws governing cryptocurrencies in the local area.

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SushiSwap CEO Suggests New Tokenomics For Liquidity And Decentralization

by Blockchain NewsJanuary 4, 2023

According to a request that was presented on the 30th of December on the Sushi’s forum, Jared Grey, the Chief Executive Officer of the decentralized exchange SushiSwap, has plans to restructure the tokenomics of the SushiSwap token.

In the new model of tokenomics that has been presented, time-lock tiers will be implemented for emission-based incentives. Additionally, a token-burning mechanism and a liquidity lock will be included in order to provide price support.

According to Grey, the new tokenomics plan is to increase “treasury reserves to assure continued operation and growth.” Additionally, the plan seeks to improve the platform’s liquidity and decentralization.

According to the approach that is being suggested, liquidity providers (LPs) would get 0.05% of the money generated from swap fees, with bigger volume pools receiving the largest proportion.

LPs will also have the option to lock their liquidity in order to receive increased rewards that are depending on emissions.

Additionally, staked SUSHI (xSUSHI) will not earn any portion of the fee money; rather, it will receive awards determined by emissions and paid out in SUSHI tokens.

Emissions-based awards will be determined using time-lock levels, with longer time locks resulting in larger prizes than shorter time locks.

It is possible to make withdrawals prior to the expiration of time locks, albeit doing so will result in the rewards being lost and destroyed.

The decentralized exchange will utilize a configurable amount of the 0.05% swap charge in order to purchase the SUSHI token again and then destroy it.

The percentage will adjust itself according to the total number of time-lock levels that are chosen.

After disclosing that it had fewer than 1.5 years of runway left in its treasury, which means that a huge deficit was jeopardizing the exchange’s economic sustainability, SushiSwap decided to rework its tokenomics. This decision was made after the company made this revelation.

Due to the fact that the token-based emission approach caused SushiSwap to incur a loss of $30 million over the course of the previous 12 months on incentives for LPs, the firm made the decision to implement the new tokenomics model.

Source

Tagged : Decentralization / JARED GREY / News / SushiSwap

Non-US FTX Customers Want Bankruptcy Files Suppressed

by Blockchain NewsJanuary 4, 2023

As part of the Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedure that is being carried out by the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, a group of FTX customers who are located outside of the United States are attempting to have their names and other private information blacked out of any court records that are made public.

In a joinder filing submitted on December 28th, the Ad Hoc Committee of Non-US Customers of FTX.com (Ad Hoc Committee) emphasized that making the names and private information of customers publicly available carries with it the potential risk of identity theft, targeted attacks, and other types of injury.

The fact that there are 15 persons listed as being a part of the organization either individually or in a representative capacity gives the impression that there are considerably more people involved.

The Ad Hoc Committee asserts that it represents individuals and organizations who have assets locked up in FTX.com totaling close to $1.9 billion in total value.

A joinder is a specific kind of legal file that occurs when many lawsuits are combined into one single proceeding or when an additional party attaches itself to an existing filing.

In this particular case, the Ad Hoc Committee is supporting the Motion of Debtors for Entry of Interim and Final Orders, which, among other things, seeks to withhold personal customer information. The Ad Hoc Committee is supporting this motion.

The United States Trustee had previously objected to the initial motion on December 12, arguing that keeping information private could threaten the transparency of FTX’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy process and that the public had a general right of access to judicial records. However, the U.S. Trustee has since withdrawn their objection.

According to what a writer for the Wall Street Journal named Andrew Scurria reported on December 29th, bankruptcy courts often demand openness into the affairs of distressed enterprises, including those of their creditors, in exchange for the protections of Chapter 11.

To the chagrin of the cryptocurrency community, a situation quite similar to this one previously took place during the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of Celsius back in October, when court filings disclosed private information of thousands of Celsius’s clients.

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Tagged : $1.9 BILLION / FTX / News / U.S. TRUSTEE

Investors Sell FTX, Celsius, BlockFi, Voyager

by Blockchain NewsJanuary 4, 2023

Some investors who hold claims on FTX, Celsius Network, BlockFi, and Voyager Digital are attempting to sell such rights to other parties so that they don’t have to wait for the lengthy bankruptcy process that these companies will have to go through. This is done so that the investors don’t have to wait for the companies to be forced to file for bankruptcy.

There are at least hundreds of investors who have been negatively impacted by the recent failures of cryptocurrency platforms FTX, Celsius, BlockFi, and Voyager and do not wish to wait for a drawn-out bankruptcy process that does not guarantee that they will even be able to get anything back, according to the information that was provided by the startup company Xclaim, which specializes in the trading of cryptocurrency claims. Xclaim is a company that specializes in cryptocurrency claims trading.

In spite of the possibility that they would incur some financial losses as a direct result of this transaction, the investors have decided to put their claims up for auction in the hope of turning a profit of some sort from the current predicament.

There were over 10,000 claims that had been posted, with 9,072 claims having been posted on Celsius Network, 93 claims having been posted on Voyager, 67 claims having been posted on FTX, and 23 claims having been put on BlockFi.

Matt Sedigh, the man who founded Xclaim, recently gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal in which he stated that his company has been taking calls from creditors located all over the world.

According to the executive, two thirds of the claims that were submitted came from creditors located in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, respectively.

It has come to the attention of certain debt investors and hedge funds that they may be interested in purchasing claims.

There have been a number of companies, including Contrarian Capital Management, Invictus Global Management, and NovaWulf Digital Management, that have acquired parts of the claims.

During this period, Celsius is making preparations to introduce a motion that will extend the deadline for users to submit their claims. This motion will allow for more time for consumers to submit their claims.

According to recent allegations, former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried is believed to have cashed out a total of $684,000 in the time after he was released on bond.

Source

Tagged : Blockfi / Celsius / FTX / News / Voyager / XCLAIM

Turkey’s Central Bank Finishes First CBDC Test With More In 2023.

by Blockchain NewsJanuary 4, 2023

After successfully completing the first test of its central bank digital currency (CBDC), the Digital Turkish Lira, the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) has announced intentions to continue testing into the year 2023.

The Central Bank of Turkey (CBRT) claimed in a statement that it successfully performed its first payment operations using the digital lira on December 29, according to a statement that was made by the CBRT.

It was said that it will continue to conduct restricted, closed circuit pilot testing with technology stakeholders during the first quarter of 2023. After that, it would extend the program to include chosen banks and financial technology businesses over the remaining months of that year.

In September 2021, the Central Bank of Turkey made the first announcement that it will begin investigating the potential advantages of adopting a digital version of the Turkish Lira as part of a study initiative titled Central Bank Digital Turkish Lira Research and Development.

At that time, the government did not make any promise to the eventual digitization of the country’s currency and made it clear that it had not taken a definitive decision regarding the release of the digital Turkish lira.

The CBRT said in its most recent statement that it would continue testing the usage of distributed ledger technologies in payment systems and their integration with immediate payment systems. This was mentioned in the CBRT’s most recent statement.

In addition, it will make the investigation of the legal issues surrounding the digital Turkish lira a top priority. These issues include the economic and legal framework around digital identity, as well as the technical needs associated with it.

Recent months have seen the launch of pilot programs for digital currencies by central banks in a number of nations, including the United Kingdom and Kazakhstan.

The Bank of England is now accepting submissions for a proof of concept for a CBDC wallet, while the Kazakhstan central bank has suggested the adoption of an in-house CBDC as early as 2023, with the implementation being phased in over the course of three years.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has lately shown some trepidation over its own plans for a CBDC. On December 8, assistant governor Brad Jones gave a speech in which he warned that a CBDC may displace the Australian dollar and cause individuals to completely forsake commercial banks.

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Tagged : CBDC / Cbrt / DIGITAL TURKISH LIRA / News

Ex-Chinese Central Banker Says Digital Yuan: Use Has Been Minimal

by Blockchain NewsJanuary 4, 2023

An ex-official of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), which is the central bank of China, has stated his dissatisfaction with the fact that China’s digital yuan is not being used very often.

According to a report published on December 28 by Caixin, Xie Ping, a former research director at the PBOC who is now a finance professor at Tsinghua University, made critical public comments about China’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) at a recent university conference. Xie Ping’s comments were made public during the conference.

Xie pointed out that the total value of all transactions conducted with digital yuan had just surpassed $14 billion (100 billion yuan) in October, two years after the debut of the currency. ” The results are not what I would have hoped for,” he stated, adding that “use has been minimal and very inactive.” In spite of the quick extension of the trials by the government and the introduction of additional wallet features in an effort to entice users, the People’s Bank of China said in January that only 261 million people have set up an e-CNY wallet.

According to a research published by China UnionPay in 2021, this number is much lower than the estimated 903.6 million individuals that use mobile payments in China.

The former official from the central bank stated that the use case of e-CNY “needs to be changed” from its current use as a cash substitute and that it should be opened to other uses such as the ability to pay for financial products or connected to more payment platforms in order to increase adoption.

He made the comparison by stating, “He likened the digital yuan to other third-party payment systems in the nation such as WeChat Pay, Alipay, and QQ Wallet, which allow for investments, lending, or borrowing.

Although there are some third-party financial applications that are compatible with e-CNY, they do not see much usage because, as Xie said, “people are habituated to” using the original service and “changing is tough.”

This level of criticism of Chinese government efforts coming from former officials is quite unusual, and it suggests that the nation may be having significant difficulty gaining momentum on its CBDC project.

The administration has moved quickly to extend e-CNY trails to a total of four additional cities, the most recent of which was in December.

It was decided to add new features to the e-CNY wallet app in the hopes of attracting users in time for the Chinese New Year. One of these new features is the capability to send digital versions of traditional red packets or red envelopes (hongbao) containing money. This is a common custom that is observed during celebrations.

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Tagged : CBDC / China / News / Yuan