Industry Insights

Central Bank Digital Currencies Emerging in the Caribbean

Many countries in the Caribbean have central banks currently working on CBDCs, including the Bank of Jamaica, The Central Bank of the Bahamas and the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union. CBDCs act as an opportunity for central banks to provide a technologically advanced representation of central bank currency. 

Decentralised Finance in Blockchain-Based Financial Markets

Decentralised Finance is a blockchain-based financial infrastructure that has been built on top of the Ethereum Blockchain and uses smart contracts to offer protocols in a more transparent and open manner.

Gemini Launches First Interest-Earning Crypto Program in the U.S.

Gemini Earn is a new program that allows customers to earn interest on the 30 different cryptocurrencies. This program will run as part of the Gemini platform and will enable customers to transfer or purchase crypto and send it to Gemini Earn. Interest is compounded daily for any period of time, and no minimum balance is required.

The Bitcoin White Paper

In response to legal threats of copyright infringement for hosting the Bitcoin white paper, Bitcoin.org and Bitcoincore.org received support from many prominent Bitcoin voices. Government officials and crypto firms, including Facebook subsidiary Novi, have continued to host this white paper on their websites to demonstrate support for the nonprofit. 

Blockchain Platform Telos Launches Decentralised Finance Tool For Unlocking Liquidity

Telos announces a new tool, T-Bond NFTs, which combines Decentralized Finance and non-fungible tokens to create locked tokens that are only unlocked when a maturity date is reached or other specified conditions are met. 

Eth2 - Introducing the Beacon Chain

Ethereum has introduced the Beacon Chain, the first step in a set of upgrades to address the clogged network, a growing required amount of disk space, and energy consumption needed to keep the network secure. The Beacon Chain's initial role will introduce staking to the Ethereum community and lay the groundwork for future upgrades. 

OCC to Prohibit Discrimination Against Legal but Disfavoured Industries

In a bid to level the playing field, the OCC has proposed a new rule that will provide fair access to financial services. This new rule would prevent banks from blacklisting legal industries, including oil and gas and cryptocurrency businesses.

Belarusbank to Offer Cryptocurrency Exchange Service

The largest financial institution in Belarus, a member country of the FATF-supported Eurasian Group (EAG), is offering citizens of Belarus and Russia to buy, sell and trade Bitcoin at optimal pricing. The bank plans to continue collaboration with Whitebird to expand these crytpocurrency services to additional countries.

First Central Bank Digital Currency Launched in the Bahamas

The Central Bank of the Bahamas (CBOB) has launched the world’s first central bank backed digital currency (CBDC).  The “Sand Dollar” was launched on October 20th and will use a network of intermediaries referred to as authorized financial institutions (AFIs) to issue the digital currency to the public.

PayPal adds Cryptocurrency Service