Coinbase – super app
At yesterday’s State of Crypto Summit (see agenda) in New York City organized by Coinbase and The Financial Times, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong laid out a global “super app” vision for his company.
CoinDesk reports, “Armstrong envisions that Coinbase, currently a centralized crypto exchange with various crypto products, will eventually become a ‘super-app,’ helping the Web3 economy. The term ‘super-app’ is used for Web2 applications like Tencent’s WeChat, which provide a vast array of services to users including financial services to booking doctors’ appointments.” Ultimately, Armstrong sees his company developing a super app of decentralized protocols. Read it.
more tips:
Are Super-Apps Coming to the U.S. Market? (from April) – Harvard Business Review
Coinbase – research
As part of its participation in their New York event yesterday, Coinbase released new research discussing adoption and interest in blockchain technologies across the Fortune 500 and a subset – the Fortune 100.
From the company blog, “Blockchain is the heart of corporate innovation: data collection/management (for both customer and internal data) is a top current use case and also the focus of the most planned initiatives among the Fortune 500, with 77% of the surveyed executives agreeing that blockchain could help make the financial system work better for everyone. Among Fortune 100 tech brands, web3 initiatives have focused mainly on infrastructure, followed by supply chain management and data collection/management.” Read the post.
more tips:
The State of Crypto: Corporate Adoption (PDF) – Coinbase
Ripple and Singapore
While it fights the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the U.S. court system, Ripple announced that it has obtained “In-Principle Approval of the Major Payments Institution License application from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). This license will allow Ripple to offer regulated digital payment token products and services in the city state, and further scale its customers’ use of its crypto-enabled On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) service.” Translation: it’s crypto token XRP can now be used in Singapore under the guidelines of the license. Read more on Ripple’s blog.
In light of the news, CNBC provides a “take” on the Singapore jurisdiction: “The Asian megacity has gained a reputation over the years for being a more financial technology and crypto-friendly jurisdiction, opening its doors to a number of major companies including domestic banking giant DBS, British fintech firm Revolut, and Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com.” Read that one.
use case – finance tokenization
Shy Datika of digital asset trading platform INX, whose company claims its INX Token was “the first SEC-registered security token to IPO on the blockchain” drops an op-ed on tokenization in financial markets. He sees four areas ripe for tokenization: digital ADRs, tokenized shares, digital bonds, digital bonds and tokenized debt. On digital ADRs, he explains, “An American depositary receipt is a certificate issued by a U.S. bank that represents ownership of a foreign company’s stock. Digital ADRs allow investors to trade foreign stocks more easily and quickly. Because they are issued and traded via blockchain technology, this reduces the costs and time associated with ADRs, as well as provides greater transparency, security and 24/7 access.” Read about the others and his (company’s) thesis.
finance and BIS
Earlier this week, the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) released a new research paper earlier in the week called “Blueprint for the future monetary system: improving the old, enabling the new.” The BIS is onboard with distributed ledger technology and tokenization. The report begins, in part: “A new type of financial market infrastructure – a unified ledger – could capture the full benefits of tokenisation by combining central bank money, tokenised deposits and tokenised assets on a programmable platform.” Download the paper (PDF)
The paper also has a 2-page glossary at the end of the 34-page report that’s worth checking out. Here’s a sample of definitions related to tokenization:
“Token: a digital representation of value in a programmable platform. Tokens can be tokenised, ie derived from claims in traditional ledgers, or can be issued natively in the platform, ie ‘native’ tokens.”
“Tokenisation: the process of recording claims on real or financial assets that exist on a traditional ledger onto a programmable platform.”
“Tokenised asset: a digital representation of a claim of an asset in a programmable platform”
The BIS has also been leading the global charge for a couple of years now on the exploration of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). See more here.
use case – Energy Web
Blockworks covers the migration of Energy Web to the Polkadot blockchain and revisits the company’s raison d’etre: tracking energy usage. “The idea for Energy Web is to accelerate the tools available at the firm’s disposal to wrangle a number of the world’s largest producers of fossil fuels to accelerate their adoption of a number of methods to mitigate, or eliminate, polluting products.” Read much more.
more on Prometheum
The curiosity around digital asset trading platform Prometheum continues for the cryptoverse after its founder’s appearance as a witness at a House Financial Services Committee meeting on digital assets last week.
Late yesterday, Laura Shin of the Unchained Podcast announced on Twitter, “Interviewing Aaron Kaplan of [Prometheum, Inc.] and [Rodrigo Seira of investment company] Paradigm tomorrow. What should I ask them?” Stay tuned.
The Securities and Exchange Commission’s company’s approval of Prometheum as a special purpose broker-dealer (SPBD) for digital assets a couple of weeks prior to Prometheum’s HFS appearance raised eyebrows and has led to an FOIA request by Blockchain Association on how that approval happened amid the SEC’s regulation by enforcement regime. Read more in Cointelegraph.
still more tips
BitGo says it’s terminating acquisition of Prime Trust – The Block
JPMorgan, DBS, Temasek bet big on Asia’s blockchain race – Nikkei Asia
Valkyrie files for spot bitcoin ETF joining BlackRock, others – Axios
Venezuela’s Ban on Crypto Mining Is Ruining the Industry It Once Embraced – Bloomberg
CFTC Charges California Resident and His Corporation with Fraud and Misappropriation in a Popular Romance Scam Involving Digital Asset Commodities and Forex – CFTC.gov
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