Banking Financial News

The purported benefits of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the United States are “uncertain and unlikely to be realized,” and there is no compelling case for it, the American Bankers Association (ABA) has said in a letter to the US Federal Reserve (Fed). The letter also warned that a CBDC could undermine the banks’ business model.

Three South Korean banks earned USD 31.2m from their crypto exchange partnership deals in 2021, new data has revealed – suggesting that partnering with trading platforms could be paying off for the often-cautious domestic banking sector.

Chinese banks are exploring new methods of enabling digital yuan users to earn interest on their central bank digital currency holdings – with “smart management” tools that can detect when funds have been left idle for long periods of time.

Looking beyond the new breed of cryptocurrency millionaires, there is an asset class that can unlock the ticket to economic freedom by solving many of the current shortcomings of the traditional financial system. At a basic level, economic freedom starts with the right for people to control their own property both in the country they reside in and across the globe.

Kakao Bank, South Korea’s biggest neobank and an affiliate of the internet giant Kakao, has refused to confirm or deny that it has struck a partnership deal with Coinone – one of the four biggest crypto exchanges in the country.

The American investment banking heavyweight Goldman Sachs has granted a customer a cash loan backed by bitcoin (BTC).

The American investment bank Goldman Sachs is taking another step toward the crypto industry with a private meeting between its CEO and crypto exchange FTX’s founder & CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. Meanwhile, German bank Commerzbank also appears to be strengthening its crypto offering after it applied for a crypto license earlier this year.

The South Korean commercial banking giant Shinhan has become the first bank in the nation to offer crypto account services to a corporate client.

Wall Street investment bank JPMorgan is persuaded that decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain technology bring major growth potential, and is determined to remain “at the forefront of this innovation,” Jamie Dimon, the bank’s Chairman and CEO, wrote in his latest letter to the company's shareholders.

As decentralized finance (DeFi) and central banking share a number of objectives, building bridges between decentralized and centralized finance (CeFi) could open up new possibilities for the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) , according to the participants of a debate held by the Innovation Hub of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB).

The Asian banking giant DBS appears to have reeled in plans to open its crypto exchange services to retail investors – and has apparently been spooked by regulatory concerns.

South Korea’s Woori Fund Service – a part of the financial business group that also comprises the commercial bank heavyweight Woori Bank – will team up with the domestic crypto exchange GDAC to unveil a business-to-business (B2B) crypto wallet management solution.

Many of the blockchains in use today are public, offering complete transparency and requiring smart contracts, each of which operates in a centralized manner. Unfortunately, these same chains are often subject to outages, hard forks and delayed processing, not to mention a lack of security and role definition necessary in conducting business transactions. For this reason, the permissioned blockchain has risen as a solution to control the activities on a given network.

Russian banks are continuing to ramp up the range of services they provide in a bid to continue providing their services outside the global banking networks they have been frozen out of after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Central banks across the world should look at bringing cryptocurrencies in the regulated space though non-fungible tokens (NFT) or stable coins will not replace fiat currency, says DBS Bank Group CEO Piyush Gupta during an interaction. Gupta, who was speaking at The Economic Times Global Business Summit, said that there is a better use case of wholesale cross-border central bank digital currencies (CBDC). «I don't think that crypto currencies will become money as we know it, but it can be an alternative to gold and its value,» Gupta said. «The other big challenge is volatility in value. If you want to use this to pay for something, you don't know what it's costing you. Today cryptos are a potential source of speculated value, it's unlikely that this is a source of money as we know it.»

HSBC, one of the largest European banks, with total assets of $2.4 trillion, announced its intention to buy a virtual plot of LAND within The Sandbox for an undisclosed amount. The new partners will develop opportunities for users to engage with sports, esports and gaming enthusiasts, according to the statement by The Sandbox.

With major financial institutions increasingly moving into the metaverse, UK bank HSBC is the first global financial services provider to enter virtual world The Sandbox, following in the steps of US-based banking giant JPMorgan which recently set up a lounge in another virtual world, Decentraland (MANA).

Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University.

Alex Kriete, Co-Head of Digital Assets at Citi, announced his resignation from the banking giant after 11 years at the firm on March 10 via LinkedIn. He stated in his post that he intends to devote himself full-time to developing a new cryptocurrency company but provided no additional details at the time.

Nasir Aminu, Senior Lecturer in Economics and Finance, Cardiff Metropolitan University. ____

A council formed by traditional finance conglomerates American Express, Discover, Visa and Mastercard welcomes a decentralized finance (DeFi) banking firm to its participating organizations that help improve payment data security worldwide.