Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to the Coinsents crypto wire, your regular update of news and events regarding Bitcoin, Ethereum, the other digital assets and the greater Global geopolitical scene at large. Today is December 20th 2022.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has proposed a set of regulations for centralized actors in the cryptocurrency space including exchanges stable coin issuers and crypto custodians in order to protect decentralized innovations and prevent consumer harm. For centralized exchanges and custodians, Armstrong suggests implementing strong know your customer and anti-money laundering policies creating a federal licensing regime, enacting consumer protection laws, setting standards for safeguarding client assets and prohibiting market manipulation. Armstrong also proposes a modern day "Howie" test to determine whether an asset should be classified as a security or commodity. He believes that foreign companies serving citizens of a country should be required to comply with local regulations, and that decentralized entities should not be regulated in order to encourage innovation.
Visa has proposed a solution called "account abstraction" that uses smart contracts to enable automated programmable payments on the ethereum blockchain. This solution involves the creation of a smart contract that acts as an intermediary between a user account and a contract account allowing for the creation of a self-custodial wallet that can make an automatic recurring payments without requiring the active participation of the user. Visa has proposed combining the functions of user accounts and smart contracts into a single type of ethereum account called a delegable account which would allow a merchant to deploy an automatic payment smart contract after a user with a delegable account grants permission. The merchant can trigger a payment by calling the charge function of the automatic payment contract. Visa has implemented this Solution on StarkNet, a Layer 2 Network for ethereum but has not announced any plans to offer it as a service.
The Donald Trump branded NFT trading card project has faced criticism after it was discovered that one thousand nfts were internally minted with 68 of these nfts being considered the rarest in the collection. The project is owned by NFT International, LLC, and not Donald Trump, although the official website suggests otherwise. The project has also faced accusations of using stock images for its nft designs and storing all metadata and artwork off chain allowing for potential changes to be made without user verification.
Binance US has agreed to acquire the assets of cryptocurrency lender Voyager digital for a little over one billion dollars following the bankruptcy filing of FTX, which had previously planned to acquire Voyager. Voyager filed for bankruptcy protection in July 2022 with around $1.3 billion in assets but $650 million in liabilities. The deal includes the fair market value of voyager's cryptocurrency portfolio, and will allow Voyager's customers to retrieve their funds in kind, and sets a clear path forward for the unlocking of customer funds as soon as possible.
The Central Bank of Kazakhstan plans to launch its own digital currency as early as 2023. The National Bank of Kazakhstan has completed the second phase of testing for the CBDC, and published a white paper outlining its findings and recommendations. The third phase of implementation and testing will begin in January and continue through 2023, with a focus on commercial application of the CBDC. The fourth phase ending in December 2025 will see the bank invite more participants to the platform and launch additional services.
A province in South Korea is focusing on developing and sustaining ties with Vietnam through the use of blockchain technology in the metaverse. The province has pledged to invest at least $13 million in the metaverse in order to become a hub for metaverse and blockchain innovation and strengthen its relationship with Vietnam. South Korea has also allocated $177 million to the development of an all-encompassing metaverse platform with the goal of becoming one of the world's most metaverse ready nations.
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX is working to recover political donations made by its founder Sam bankman freed who is accused of violating U.S campaign finance regulations by making donations to politicians in the name of other people. Bankma-Fried, and other top executives at FTX reportedly donated over $70 million to U.S politicians during the 2021-2022 election cycle. FTX said it has been approached by recipients of such payments who are looking to return them but if they are not returned voluntarily the company plans to take legal action to require their return, with interest. Bankman freed had become one of the top political donors in the United States prior to his fall from grace with the Democrat Party being the main beneficiary of his donations.
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