Image by Ledger Insights Banco Central do Brasil has announced the 13 themes that will be trialed during the second phase of the DREX pilots. Santander, Visa, Mastercard and Google are amongst the participants in the 16 consortia, which involve over 50 companies.   DREX is a wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (wCBDC) system where […]

Image by Ledger Insights   In April, Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin announced it is willing to purchase tokens in BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized money market fund (MMF) as a secondary market buyer. So BUIDL investors can sell their tokens 24/7 in exchange for USDC. This was a groundbreaking move for a fund issued […]

Image by Ledger Insights Three senior executives at stablecoin issuer, Circle, published a paper outlining a Token Capital Adequacy Framework (TCAF), inspired by the Basel Committee rules for banks. One of the most interesting aspects of the paper is the conclusion that the USDC stablecoin would not have suffered the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) de-peg […]

Image by Ledger Insights   The European Central Bank announced an invitation to a workshop on the future of business-to-business (B2B) payments. Its work on developing the digital euro  Central bank digital currency (CBDC) has prioritized personal and government payments. The ECB’s separate initiative exploring DLT and wholesale central bank money settlement targets institutions. Hence, […]

Image by The Crypto Times   OpenAI is beginning to roll out its new advanced voice mode for ChatGPT to a limited group of ChatGPT Plus subscribers. A select group of subscribers will have access to a variety of voice options, offering more natural and engaging audio responses. This feature was initially revealed at the […]

Image by Ledger Insights   On Friday the US Treasury published its semi-annual regulatory agenda. It includes two issues affecting cryptocurrency that may be related. In late 2020 the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) proposed a controversial rule change requiring additional AML reporting for transactions of more than $10,000 involving self hosted wallets. According to […]

If you have used Google lately and been lucky – or unlucky – enough to encounter an answer to your query rather than a bunch of links, you have been subjected to something called AI Overviews. This is a new core feature that Google has been rolling out, a move widely anticipated since the company’s […]

From government documents to news reports, commerce, music and social interactions, much of the world’s information is now online. And Google, founded in 1998 with the mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” is the way we access this torrent of knowledge and culture.   In April 2024, Google’s […]

Image by Ledger Insights The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) has published a digital assets annex for its Global Master Repurchase (repo) Agreement (GMRA). The Annex follows work by ICMA and ISLA in the Digital Assets Legal Working Group, with Clifford Chance appointed as counsel.   Repo involves the sale of collateral, usually securities, with […]

By Oliver Bossert, Klaas Ole Kürtz, and Gérard Richter Not all tech trends are created equal. Keeping a clear eye on what matters can help steer to better decisions. Many who work in IT have heard variations of these statements from well-meaning senior colleagues. And given how much technology underpins so many trends, as well […]