The cryptocurrency market remains range-bound with a slight bullish bias as Bitcoin (BTC) tries to break above the level of $40,000 for the last few days. While writing this article, Bitcoin was trading at $39,126, down 1.5% in the past 24 hours. Ether (ETH) was trading at $2,594, down 2.20% in the same period. XRP had gained 1% to trade at $0.7300.
Major altcoins, which have gained ground in the past 24 hours, are Dash (DASH-$161.30, 2.6%), Binance Coin (BNB-$330.05, 0.70%), IOTA (IOTA-$0.8793, 1.9%), Cosmos (ATOM, $12.34, 1.10%), Tezos (XTZ-3.14, 7.50%), Tron (TRX-$0.0647, 3.10%), EOS (EOS-$4.03, 2.70%), ChainLink (LINK-$23.69, 9.70%), Cardano (ADA-$1.31, 0.1%), Polkadot (DOT-$18.11, 0.2%), Bitcoin Cash (BCH-$544.38, 3.70%), Stellar (XLM-$0.2744, 0.4%), and Bitcoin SV (BSV-$145, 3.4%).
Government level initiatives
Bank of Nigeria to trial e-naira in October
Rakiya Mohammed, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s director of information technology, has stated that the central bank intends to trial the e-naira (the digital form of legal tender in the country) as soon as October 1st. The availability of a CBDC (central bank digital currency) is expected to increase financial inclusion, which currently stands at 60%, in the country. The availability of e-naira is expected to boost the developing e-commerce economy in the country.
The central bank is encouraged to move forward with the CBDC initiative by the considerable volume of remittance received by the country. Last year, Nigeria was placed in the 10th position in the list of countries with large inward remittances.
The launch of the e-naira could minimize the fees paid by the Nigerians working abroad to transfer money to their country. Additionally, e-naira is also expected to act as a counter to other cryptocurrencies, which continue to gain popularity in the country.
The country began a detailed study of digital currency four years ago. Notably, after Ghana, Nigeria is the second West African country to officially announce a date for the trial of its CBDC. Ghana is expected to begin the trial of the digital cedi in September.
Private sector initiatives
Paxos launches Paxos Settlement Service
Paxos rolled out a blockchain-based commodity transaction platform named Paxos Settlement Service. The platform facilitates the concurrent settlement of cash and commodities in a trade. Until now, $1.50 billion worth of transactions have been completed using the platform, with Koch Metals Trading and StoneX being the participants.
Earlier, Paxos rolled out a similar platform for trading stocks, with participation from Nomura’s Instinet, the Bank of America, Societe Generale, and Credit Suisse. Two years ago, the SEC issued a no-action letter to Paxos, enabling the firm to run the stock settlement service with certain restrictions until October 2021. The platform facilitates both same-day and T+2 settlement without any kind of early cut-off time in the case of a same-day settlement.
Both settlement platforms intend to resolve counterparty risk through the use of a delivery versus payment mechanism.
Anoushka Rayner, Head of Commodities Growth at Paxos, said, “Paxos is building a global network with critical functions like multilateral payment netting to bring more efficiency and automation to settlement.”
Paxos, a nationally chartered trust bank, facilitates settlements when the buyer remits money to Paxos through Fedwire. The bank retains the funds in trust and uses digital equivalent for utilization on the blockchain platform. Similarly, stocks and commodities are digitized/tokenized on a platform developed using the Ethereum blockchain.
Allianz no using a blockchain-powered vehicle insurance platform
Europe’s largest insurance company Allianz revealed that it has started using the blockchain-powered motor insurance platform on a commercial basis in mid-May. The enterprise-level blockchain platform is now used by 23 of its European subsidiaries. In the initial six weeks of launch, the platform has been used to successfully handle 145,000 transactions related to more than 10,000 accident claims from that region.
Bob Crozier, Allianz Technology’s Head of Enterprise Architecture & Global Head of Blockchain, said, “We’re just super excited to bring an emerging technology like blockchain and make it real for the business and bring real, tangible business value for Allianz.”
The platform resolves the central issue of identifying the legal entity which should process the claim. For example, if a car is insured with Allianz Hungary and meets with an accident in France, the issue will be whether Allianz Hungary or Allianz France should process the claim.
Usually, it will take weeks of communication between both branches before the branch that needs to process the papers is decided. The blockchain platform, through the use of a single source record of the decision about every claim, resolves the issue. Furthermore, the platform saves time and avoids unnecessary expenses leading to the quick settlement of the claim.
JCB and LayerX release confidentiality and privacy report
In 2020, JCB – Japan’s biggest credit card provider – collaborated with blockchain-focused startup LayerX to develop a B2B payment platform. Last week, they released a detailed report on blockchain confidentiality and privacy centered on confidential computing.
The document explains the manner in which enterprises can distribute data in a secure and private manner for further calculations. The blockchain platform outlined in the paper explains the manner in which data sharing is conducted off-chain, whereas blockchain could be used for logging.
The most common use of confidential computing technology is to assess creditworthiness. Similarly, LayerX has identified anti-money laundering (AML) as a potential application of the technology. Additional use cases mentioned in the document are the utilization of payment history from several firms and programmable money.
Using Intel’s SGX chips as a safe enclave, LayerX has developed Anonify technology. The enclave is fundamentally a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), where computations are carried out in a black box-like scenario. Notably, the TEE is protected from the remaining sections of the operating system. Encrypted data is fed into the black box system, gets decrypted temporarily for calculations, and the output is sent out.
Disclaimer: Any financial trading analysis offered here is our opinion and is not intended as advice or direction for investors. We cannot guarantee the success of any trades made as a consequence of this article, and we encourage traders to incorporate a strong money management strategy to limit losses when they enter the markets. Please use this article as part of your own research before formulating strategies prior to trading.
