digital currency

Huobi gets green light as exchange provider in Australia

Gibraltar-based cryptocurrency exchange Huobi has received the regulatory greenlight to offer its services in Australia.

Crypto exchange Huobi can begin offering cryptocurrency exchange services in Australia after its registration as a digital currency exchange provider with the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (AUSTRAC) on Aug. 1. This means Huobi can now offer fiat to cryptocurrency trading services in the country.

Cointelegraph has reached out to Huobi to ascertain whether it will be able to offer full exchange services. The company initially indicated it would focus on providing OTC services after receiving its registration.

The exchange continues to look at broadening its horizons and is also eyeing a move into the American market. Huobi formed an American subsidiary, HBIT, in July 2022. It has received a Money Services Business license, with the company hoping to launch exchange services in the future.

Huobi also scored licenses in New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates in June 2022. Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) granted the exchange provisional approval to begin offering its services in the country. Huobi’s local entity will offer a full suite of cryptocurrency exchange products and services, which will operate under a test-adapt-scale model as part of the process of becoming licensed. 

Related: US expansion for Huobi a step closer after it secures a FinCEN license

The company had its struggles in Thailand during the same month, eventually shuttering after failing to comply with Thai Securities and Exchange Commission regulations.

Huobi was forced to relocate to Gibraltar in late 2021 following China’s latest crackdown on cryptocurrency use. The British Overseas Territory has become an attractive location for cryptocurrency businesses and service providers.

Israel puts the brakes on cash to spur digital payments

It’s believed that Israel will neither be the first nor last country to impose such measures.

Authorities in Israel on Monday has in put in place further restrictions on cash payments as a means to combat illegal activity and spur digital payments in the country. 

Since January 2019, Israeli businesses and consumers have been subject to limits on cash payments under the Law for the Reduction in the Use of Cash. It’s aimed at shifting the country’s citizens and businesses toward digital payments, allowing authorities to more easily track tax evasion, black market activity and money laundering.

From Monday, the limits on cash payments have been tightened to $1,760 United States dollars, or 6,000 Israeli shekels, for business transactions and $4,400 USD, or 15,000 shekels, in personal transactions.

Further restrictions are expected to follow in the future, prohibiting the stockpiling of more than $58,660 USD, or 200,000 shekels, in cash at private residences.

Tamar Bracha, who is reportedly in charge of executing the law on behalf of the Israel Tax Authority (ITA), recently told Media Line that limiting the use of cash will make increase the difficulty of criminal activity, stating:

“The goal is to reduce cash fluidity in the market, mainly because crime organizations tend to rely on cash.”

Meanwhile, the new limits placed on hard-cash transactions have been seen by some as a good sign for future crypto adoption in the country.

On Saturday, crypto influencer Lark Davis told his 1 million followers on Twitter that Israel is neither the first nor last country to introduce such restrictions and took the opportunity to reference Bitcoin in his post.

Meanwhile, strategic investor Lyn Alden, founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, said that the trend “will probably continue to other countries over time.”

CBDCs & crypto regulation

The country is also one of several nations in the region exploring central bank digital currencies (CDBCs), having first considered a CBDC at the end of 2017.

In May, the Bank of Israel revealed the responses to a public consultation around its plans for a “digital shekel,” indicating that there was strong support for continued research on CBDCs and how it would impact the payments market, financial and monetary stability and legal and technological issues.

In June, the Bank of Israel revealed it had conducted a lab experiment examining user privacy and smart contracts’ use in payments, marking its first technological experiment with a CBDC.

The country is also in the process of creating a regulatory framework around digital assets. During this year’s annual Israel Crypto Conference in May, Jonathan Shek of Oz Finance revealed that Israel’s financial authorities had been preparing a comprehensive and holistic regulatory framework for digital assets.

While he didn’t give an exact date, Shek teased it would come in the near future because the Israeli government was keen to foster the growth of the crypto industry in their state if done in a responsible manner.

Board urges Bank of Central African States to introduce common digital currency: Report

The Central African Republic, one of the nations served by the Bank of Central African States, passed legislation adopting Bitcoin as legal tender in April.

The Bank of Central African States, or Banque des États de l’Afrique, which serves Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of the Congo, could be closer to releasing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) reportedly at the urging of its board.

According to a Friday report from Bloomberg, the board sent an email calling for the regional bank to introduce a digital currency in an effort to modernize payment structures and promote regional financial inclusion. The Central African Republic, or CAR, passed legislation adopting Bitcoin (BTC) as legal tender in the country in April but has not recognized a central bank digital currency.

Nigeria’s central bank was one of the first in the region to launch a CBDC called the eNaira in October 2021, while South Africa’s Reserve Bank continues to explore the possible use of a CBDC through its Project Khokha initiative. The Bank of Central African States also criticized the CAR for accepting BTC as legal tender, calling the move “problematic” and something that could have a “substantial negative impact” on the monetary union of Central Africa.

Sub-Saharan African nations could face significant challenges introducing cryptocurrencies and CBDCs to areas with limited access to electricity, both for transfers and mining. According to 2020 data from the World Bank, the CAR and Chad both rank among the lowest percentages of the population with access to electricity, at 15.5% and 11.1%, respectively.

Related: Africa can create an inclusive society with blockchain, says LBank CEO

Following its adoption of Bitcoin, CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra announced in June that the country would be adopting a crypto initiative called the Sango project, which included a “legal crypto hub” and a special economic zone in the Metaverse. Africa remains one of the fastest growing digital asset markets in the world — Cointelegraph reported in March that crypto transactions had increased by up to 2,670% year-over-year in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal and Dakar.

Russian bank Sber to complete its first digital currency deal

Sber was initially planning to launch its blockchain-enabled digital asset platform and the Sbercoin stablecoin by spring 2021.

Russian banking giant Sber — formerly known as Sberbank — is preparing to complete its first digital currency deal involving the bank’s proprietary digital asset platform soon.

The bank will conduct its first transaction involving digital financial assets (DFA) on its digital asset issuance platform by mid-July.

Anatoly Popov, deputy chairman of Sber’s executive board, disclosed Sber’s plans to complete such a deal in an interview with the state-backed news agency TASS on June 15.

Popov claimed that Sber finally received registration from the country’s central bank — the Bank of Russia — in spring 2022, following a series of registration delays. Sber has been struggling to register its digital asset issuance platform, initially expected to launch alongside its Sbercoin stablecoin by spring 2021.

While the latest news doesn’t directly mention the application of blockchain on Sber’s platform, Popov noted that the bank is committed to exploring the technology, stating:

“We are looking closely at the development of new technologies like distributed ledger technology. We are studying how blockchain technologies are developing. Our platform has already passed acceptance tests, and the first transaction will take place within a month.”

The news came in conjunction with VTB — Russia’s second-largest bank — also preparing to test the purchase of DFAs in exchange for Russia’s central bank digital currency, the digital ruble, in September 2022. VTB’s board member Svyatoslav Ostrovsky reportedly announced plans to launch a new platform to buy digital rubles at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 15.

Related: Russian central bank signals agreement with crypto law revisions: Report

The Russian parliament passed a new bill in the first reading to prohibit the use of DFAs as payment for goods and services on Tuesday.

IMF recommends eco-friendly CBDCs and non-PoW mechanisms for payments

In addition to eco-friendly components, the IMF recommended central banks include other features in their CBDCs, such as compliance, higher resilience and offline capabilities.

An International Monetary Fund study on energy consumption has reveale the importance of design choices within the crypto ecosystem to build an environmentally friendly mainstream payment system.

In the study, titled “Digital Currencies and Energy Consumption,” the IMF examines the energy consumption of crypto assets based on their distinct design elements to evaluate the ideal mechanism for developing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Estimates of energy use (in kWh) per transaction for the core processing of different payment systems. Source: IMF

Sharing the groundwork for policy discussions around the environmental impacts of digital currencies, the IMF recommends moving away from proof-of-work-based distributed ledger technology applications, adding:

“In particular, Bitcoin, the best known application of this type, is estimated to consume much energy (about 144 TWh [terawatt-hours]) per year. Although scalability solutions reduce the energy cost per transaction, they do not reduce the overall energy spending.”

However, the international organization acknowledged the high energy efficiency brought about by non-PoW, permissioned crypto assets when compared with the traditional financial system:

“The potential of non-PoW permissioned crypto assets to reduce energy consumption relative to the existing payment system comes about from energy savings on both core processing architectures and user payment means.”

The IMF recommends the central banks “design CBDCs with the explicit goal to be environmentally friendly.” This means selecting platforms, hardware and design options with “a lower carbon footprint than the central banks’ legacy systems” right from the experimentation phase.

In addition to eco-friendly components, the IMF recommended central banks include other features in CBDCs, such as compliance, higher resilience and offline capabilities.

The IMF also points out that the policymakers will consider the mainstreaming of crypto or CBDCs by weighing the environmental impact of the technology’s underlying design. It estimates that the global payment system’s annual energy consumption stands at 47.3 TWh — roughly matching the yearly consumption of economies like Portugal and Bangladesh.

Joining in the cause to address climate change, the Iota Foundation, a nonprofit DLT ecosystem provider, partnered with Dell Technologies to develop a real-time carbon footprint tracking system.

The initiative will bring about near-real-time tracking of carbon emissions from BioE’s sustainable energy and composting facility. Mathew Yarger, head of sustainability at the Iota Foundation, stated:

“We’re now able to track and verify data around climate change and how we’re actively trying to address it at a level that’s never been achieved before.”

‘CBDCs are the natural evolution,’ says HyperLedger director Barbosa

In an interview filmed during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Daniela Barbosa gives the floor to enterprise blockchains and the future of currencies.

For Daniela Barbosa — general manager of blockchain, healthcare and identity at the Linux Foundation and executive director of Hyperledger — digital currencies and cryptocurrencies have made it among the big banks at the World Economic Forum in Davos. 

In an interview with Cointelegraph shot against the backdrop of the Swiss Alps, Barbosa explained that in the few years she has attended the WEF, the presence of cryptocurrency companies has steadily grown. What’s more, we should not be afraid of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

“CBDCs are [a]natural evolution of digital dollars and digital currencies.”

While the WEF saw calls from some bankers for a CBDC rollout to slow down, Barbosa explained that a CBDC could be with us in this decade.

Hyperledger’s work overlaps that of CBDCs, particularly in light of a partnership with the Digital Dollar Project. The nonprofit organization seeks to further the research into a U.S. CBDC. The key to CBDC implementation, however, is in succeeding with “privacy-preserving methods.”

An advocate for digital identity, privacy and “having control of your data,” Barbosa also shared the story of how she got into Bitcoin while living in San Francisco and working for Dow Jones in the mid-2010s.

“I did go to a [Bitcoin] meetup once and I was older than everybody else and also female—and I thought, maybe this is not for me?”

Fortunately, Barbosa kept abreast of Bitcoin and the market when time allowed before joining HyperLedger, an enterprise blockchain solutions-based company, in 2016.

Related: UN agency head sees ‘massive opportunities’ in crypto: WEF 2022

While blockchains can sometimes be touted as a catch-all solution, Barbosa explained that sometimes blockchains are not the ideal situation and “should not be used.” Many blockchain use cases in 2016 and 2017, for example, wanted the “media to pay attention.” In 2022, a blockchain works when:

“You want to use a distributed ledger when you have multi parties that are working together—you don’t want to have to create another middle layer than helps disintermediate all the assets going around.”

HyperLedger now covers everything from pharmaceuticals to finance while its blockchain solutions tackle climate change.