TOKI, a cross-chain bridge provider and partner of Progmat, will be working with Noble, a token issuance protocol, to bring fully collateralized Japanese stablecoins to the Cosmos ecosystem.

Progmat is a project launched by Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking (MUFG) — the largest bank in Japan, and has the support of over 200 Japanese companies including major banks such as SMBC and Mizuho. The Japan Exchange Group (JPX) is also involved in the project.

Progmat is currently building a platform that will enable banks and regulated financial institutions to issue their own stablecoins.

The basic architecture involves financial institutions interested in issuing stablecoins depositing an equivalent amount of fiat currency with MUFG’s trust bank. Progmat then issues an equivalent amount of stablecoins. The funds in the trust bank are bankruptcy-remote, making this potentially the most secure stablecoin for use on public blockchains。

#crypto2023

On June 30, reports emerged that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has returned recent spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications. The applications, submitted by exchanges on behalf of BlackRock and Fidelity Investments, among others, were deemed not “sufficiently clear or comprehensive.”

Fidelity, WisdomTree, VanEck, ARK Invest, Galaxy/Invesco and BlackRock all filed for spot bitcoin ETFs over the past few weeks, hoping to succeed at launching a product the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected for years. While BlackRock filed with Nasdaq, the other companies are working with Cboe.

An anonymous source cited by the Wall Street Journal shared that the applications failed to identify the spot Bitcoin exchange that would enter into a “surveillance sharing agreement” (SSA) with Nasdaq and Cboe. This agreement is a prerequisite for the SEC, aimed at preventing fraud and manipulation in the underlying market of an asset.

Cboe's BZX Exchange named crypto exchange Coinbase as the market for its surveillance-sharing agreement when it refiled its spot bitcoin exchange-traded (ETF) fund applications for several would-be bitcoin ETF issuers on Friday.

Complicating the SEC's calculus may be the fact that it sued Coinbase earlier this month on allegations of operating an unregistered securities exchange, broker and clearinghouse – though the SEC is not alleging that Bitcoin itself is a security, and SEC Chair Gary Gensler has often referred to it as an example of a digital asset that is not a security.

#SEC #ETF #bitcoin #ETH

On June 30, reports emerged that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has returned recent spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) applications. The applications, submitted by exchanges on behalf of BlackRock and Fidelity Investments, among others, were deemed not “sufficiently clear or comprehensive.”

Fidelity, WisdomTree, VanEck, ARK Invest, Galaxy/Invesco and BlackRock all filed for spot bitcoin ETFs over the past few weeks, hoping to succeed at launching a product the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has rejected for years. While BlackRock filed with Nasdaq, the other companies are working with Cboe.

An anonymous source cited by the Wall Street Journal shared that the applications failed to identify the spot Bitcoin exchange that would enter into a “surveillance sharing agreement” (SSA) with Nasdaq and Cboe. This agreement is a prerequisite for the SEC, aimed at preventing fraud and manipulation in the underlying market of an asset.

Cboe's BZX Exchange named crypto exchange Coinbase as the market for its surveillance-sharing agreement when it refiled its spot bitcoin exchange-traded (ETF) fund applications for several would-be bitcoin ETF issuers on Friday.

Complicating the SEC's calculus may be the fact that it sued Coinbase earlier this month on allegations of operating an unregistered securities exchange, broker and clearinghouse – though the SEC is not alleging that Bitcoin itself is a security, and SEC Chair Gary Gensler has often referred to it as an example of a digital asset that is not a security.

Reported by Cryptoslate, Fidelity Investments refiled its application for its spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF), called Wise Origin Bitcoin Trust, on June 29.

Fidelity first filed its application in 2021, but it was rejected by the SEC in January 2022, along with other spot Bitcoin ETF applications. To date, no institution that has filed a spot Bitcoin ETF application has received approval.

However, a wave of institutional interest appears to have been sparked by BlackRock‘s spot Bitcoin ETF. Fidelity is the latest to join a spate of such re-applications sparked by BlackRock’s own application earlier in June.

As of June 29, there are now nine pending applications for a spot Bitcoin ETF submitted with the SEC. The other applications were filed by Ark Invest, 21Shares, Bitwise, WisdomTree, Invesco, Valkyrie, and VanEck.

All companies’ applications — excluding BlackRock — have been denied by the SEC in the past two years. BlackRock itself has a long history of ETF approvals — with 575 ETFs approved and only one ever rejected — which has made markets optimistic that this application, too, will be approved.

#BTC #ETF #SEC

Paul Grewal, Chief Legal Officer at Coinbase, announced that the exchange has filed its answer and notice of intent to file a motion to dismiss the US Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) lawsuit. Grewal said that the SEC's claims in this case "go far beyond existing law and should be dismissed".

Previously, the SEC sued Coinbase for violating the security laws, alleging that multiple cryptocurrencies it provided were unregistered securities. But Coinbase denied the accusations in the file, saying that cryptos are not investment contracts, and the issuers of the tokens owe no obligations to investors. "Because no such obligations are carried in the transactions over Coinbase's secondary market exchange, and because the value that Coinbase purchasers receive through these transactions inheres in the things bought and traded rather than in the businesses that generated them, the transactions are not securities transactions."

"Even were the SEC correct that the assets and services it identifies are within the scope of its existing regulatory authority, this action must be dismissed on the independent grounds that it violates Coinbase's due process rights and constitutes an extraordinary abuse of process. For years, Coinbase has voluntarily submitted to regulation by multiple overlapping regulatory bodies, has adhered to the public and limited formal guidance from the SEC, senior SEC Staff, and the courts about the application of securities law to its industry, and has begged the SEC for guidance about how it thinks the federal securities laws map onto the digital asset industry as the SEC’s actions reflected an escalating but undisclosed change in its own view of its authority." Coinbase added.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has collaborated with 11 financial institutions to explore infrastructure models that would facilitate tokenized asset trading.

The MAS's Project Guardian report, released on June 26, emphasized the importance of open and interoperable digital asset networks in unlocking the full potential of asset tokenization. The report examined three use cases, including over-the-counter (OTC) foreign exchange transactions, trade finance, and OTC-structured notes.

The first use case was over-the-counter (OTC) foreign exchange transactions.

It concluded:

“Trading in a permissioned liquidity pool protocol achieves greater efficiency by reducing friction and minimising risks, while the tokenised assets bring the benefits of atomic settlement.”

The second use case was trade finance and focused on asset-backed securities tokenization. In this model, tokenized trade finance receivable assets are repackaged as natively issued fungible tokens and divided into two tranches with differing risk exposures.

The third use case was OTC-structured notes, which are “a popular wealth management product with substantial traction and demand in Asian wealth centres.

Project Guardian was launched in May 2022. It will continue to examine “other focused themes of Trust Anchors and Institutional DeFi.”

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is conducting an experiment using Curve V2 hybrid function AMM for central bank digital currency transactions. In its mid-term report on June 28, BIS described how its Project Mariana utilized automated Market Makers (AMM) for cross-border transactions of wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), specifically mentioning the selection of "a hybrid function market maker (HFMM), specifically Curve V2". However, it also noted that the selection of Curve V2 was only for experimental purposes, and does not reflect any endorsement by any relevant institutions for this protocol, or any of its products.

Project Mariana is an exploratory project launched in collaboration with bank of Franch, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Swiss National Bank, aiming to study the possibility of cross-border transactions using wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (wCBDC). The project was launched in November, and it released its mid-term report as scheduled, pledging to release the final report by the end of this year.

Wholesale central bank digital currency primarily refers to the digital currency issued by the central bank for commercial banks and other financial institutions, rather than being directly available to the public.