Daily crypto news alerts for today, 11th December, 2020.
🗞Russian officials ordered to report on the ownership of digital assets
Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new decree on December 10, according to which Russian officials will have to provide reports on the ownership of cryptocurrencies by June 30, 2021.
The decree "On measures to implement certain provisions of the Federal Law" On digital financial assets, digital currency and on amendments to certain legislative acts of the Russian Federation "was published on the official portal of legal information.
According to the document, officials will be required to provide "a notice of digital financial assets belonging to them, their spouses and minor children, digital rights, including both digital financial assets and other digital rights, utilitarian digital rights and digital currency (if any) in the form according to the appendix No. 1 ".
The application contains a notification form for the ownership of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, with digital financial assets, digital currencies and utilitarian digital assets separately highlighted. The decree comes into force on January 1, 2021.
Also, government departments, including the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, authorities and local governments, state extra-budgetary funds and state-owned companies are "recommended" to be guided by the decree when determining the procedure for submitting information on income and property.
Earlier, the chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, Alexander Bastrykin, said that the cryptocurrency must be recognized as property in Russia in order to facilitate the investigation of crimes.
🗞Israeli bank Hapoalim joins Digital Bank Guarantee platform
One of the largest Israeli banks, Hapoalim, has joined the Digital Bank Guarantee digital banking platform developed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
The Digital Bank Guarantee platform, based on the Quartz blockchain, aims to facilitate and accelerate the issuance of digital bank guarantees in Israel. It allows you to more efficiently manage the life cycle of bank guarantees, including their issue, modification, revocation and termination.
The solution allows you to create a dedicated node for the transmission of a digital bank guarantee. In the future, TCS plans to increase the use cases for the Digital Bank Guarantee.
According to Dov Kotler, CEO of Hapoalim, the platform will allow the bank to expand its client base and attract both large corporations and small and medium-sized companies. Thanks to the blockchain, records will remain unchanged, and this aspect of the technology is appealing to financial institutions.
Recall that earlier, the three largest Australian banks created the Lygon organization, which will help digitize bank guarantees and transfer them to the IBM Hyperledger blockchain.
🗞MetaMask will release an institutional version of the Ethereum wallet
Ethereum company ConsenSys has announced the imminent release of an institutional version of the popular MetaMask wallet.
The new version of the product is aimed at trading firms and custodians who will be offered “institutional-level functions”.
“Users will be able to deposit, exchange and borrow tokens, as well as invest in Ethereum applications. It will use the same familiar MetaMask interface, but with the security and reporting options required for a professional DeFi service, ”the press release said.
One of the first new options will be used by Curv, which is creating its own DeFi product. The well-known investment platform eToro is among the company's clients.
It was previously reported on an interface built into MetaMask that brings together several decentralized exchanges and aggregators.
🗞SpaceChain Receives Funding To Develop Satellite Blockchain Infrastructure
The British company SpaceChain with consortium partners received a grant of £ 440,000 to jointly develop a decentralized satellite infrastructure (DSI) with blockchain-based equipment.
SpaceChain, Addvalue Innovation Pte Ltd and Alba Orbital became the winners of the EUREKA Globalstarsl competition, announced for representatives of 14 countries. Funding was provided by its organizer, the European research coordination agency EUREKA, together with Enterprise Singapore and Innovate UK.
According to the statement, DSI will be formed by a network of multi-party, multi-jurisdictional spacecraft operating in low-earth orbit. The project aims to reduce barriers to entry into the space sector, as well as bridge the communication gap between technology and data.
The DSI architecture and blockchain are expected to provide a secure, reliable connection for real-time satellite control.
“The infrastructure is designed to facilitate the development of commercial use cases that link space resource providers, satellite applications and fintech companies through a secure, low-latency network,” the statement said.
It highlights that the innovation is made possible by SpaceChain's software, Alba Orbital's Unicorn-2 platform for ultra-small CubeSat satellites, and real-time communications via Addvalue's inter-satellite communications system.
“Space exploration projects are huge in scale and require close collaboration and partnerships, and this milestone opens up new opportunities for commercial solutions using space applications and blockchain,” said Nick Tradgen, Commercial Director of SpaceChain.
Earlier, the company received a grant from the European Space Agency to research the satellite system of cryptocurrency wallets.
In August, SpaceChain successfully completed a Bitcoin transaction using multisignature technology on hardware hosted on the International Space Station.
🗞Fidelity Launches BTC-Secured Fiat Lending Service
Fidelity Digital Assets has partnered with startup BlockFi to enable customers to use BTC as collateral for fiat-currency loans.
According to Bloomberg, the cryptocurrency-focused arm of financial services giant Fidelity will allow investors to use BTC to collateralize fiat-currency loans. Bloomberg quotes Fidelity Digital Assets President Tom Jessop as saying that using bitcoin to secure loans will become "a pretty important part of the ecosystem."
Fidelity institutional clients will need a BlockFi account in order to receive a loan. Bitcoin volatility will be managed by BlockFi with 60% cash backed by the digital asset. According to the publication, Fidelity expects hedge funds, cryptocurrency miners and OTC trading platforms to take advantage of the new service.
Recall that in August, Expobank for the first time in Russia issued a bank loan secured by a crypto asset - it was received by entrepreneur Mikhail Uspensky. In the same month, the American cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced that it was preparing to launch the Borrow loan service in the United States, within which customers could receive loans in US dollars secured by bitcoins.
