Ethereum studio ConsenSys will support the development of digital currency

Ethereum studio ConsenSys will support the development of digital currency of the Bank of France

Ethereum studio ConsenSys has announced a partnership with Société Générale to participate in the digital euro trial.

The collaboration concerns Société Générale's Forge platform used to shape capital markets. In early 2019, it was used to issue a 100 million eurobond in the form of a security token on the Ethereum blockchain.

SG Forge has been named as one of the key partners of the Banque de France in its work on the central bank's digital currency. ConsenSys will provide technology solutions and provide valuable expertise in further testing. In addition to them, companies such as Accenture, Euroclear and HSBC are participating in the project.

Shortly before this, ConsenSys announced it was joining the Ithanon-Lionrock project, which is to create a digital currency for transactions between Thailand and Hong Kong.

The Central Bank of Cambodia officially launched the state digital currency

Bakong's digital currency, which supports dollar and Cambodian riel transactions, should make Cambodia's payment system more efficient and modern. Citizens of the country can exchange digital currency using mobile applications on smartphones.

The developers of the digital currency stressed that not all Cambodians have access to banking services, but mobile communications and smartphones are available even in the most remote corners of the country. The launch of Bakong is especially important in view of the coronavirus epidemic.

“I hope that the official launch of Bakong will help improve the social welfare of our citizens, as well as prevent the spread of COVID-19 by simplifying electronic payments and eliminating cash,” said Chea Serey, CEO of the National Bank of Cambodia.

The fact that the Central Bank of Cambodia is developing its own digital currency became known at the beginning of this year. The government's cryptocurrency is expected to help small businesses grow by lowering costs, as well as reducing the risk of COVID-19 infection through cash.

In China, the court sentenced the organizers of the WoToken cryptocurrency pyramid

The Yancheng City Court in the Chinese province of Jiangsu has sentenced the four organizers of the WoToken cryptocurrency pyramid, which raised $ 1.1 billion between August 2018 and October 2019.

Gao Yudong, Li Qibing, Wang Xiaoying and Tian Bo were sentenced to prison terms ranging from 2.5 to 8.8 years. Also from the organizers of the pyramid, $ 63 million found during the investigation were confiscated.

The pyramid organizers promised users a fixed and variable return on investment. According to them, the profit was generated by a trading algorithm using arbitrage transactions on major cryptocurrency exchanges. Of course, no algorithm existed, and the profits were paid to the participants of the scheme through the deposits of new clients.

According to law enforcement agencies, 715,249 users from China participated in the WoToken pyramid. In total, they transferred 46,050 BTC, 286 million USDT, 2 million ETH and 292,590 LTC to the organizers' wallets. The total assets were $ 1.1 billion.

ViewBase: a quarter of ETH is held in exchange wallets

According to ViewBase, today there are 26,712,401 ETH worth about $ 10.3 billion on exchange wallets, which is 23.6% of the total volume of coins in circulation. About 26 million ethers are on centralized exchanges. Of these, 8.5 million ETH are held on Coinbase, 5.2 million ETH on Bitfinex, and 3.2 million ETH on Huobi.

It should be noted that Ether is far ahead of Bitcoin in terms of the number of coins stored on exchanges. For bitcoin, this figure is only 8.1%. According to research firm Glassnode, this figure has been steadily declining throughout the year. In February, the number of bitcoins on exchange wallets reached 2.97 million BTC, and now it is less than 2.6 million BTC.

According to cryptocurrency analyst Willy Woo, such a decline indicates the arrival of new buyers who are taking cryptoassets from the markets and moving them into their wallets for cold storage. The low share of bitcoins on exchanges contributes to the development of a "macro" trend. Glassnode added that about 480,000 new Bitcoin addresses appear every day, six times more than Ethereum's, which is less than 80,000 new addresses per day.

However, according to July data from analyst firm Messari, since the beginning of 2020, the number of active Ethereum addresses has increased and is growing twice as fast as Bitcoin. The situation has changed this month. Analysts at Glassnode reported that the number of active Bitcoin addresses has risen to 388,697 and is preparing to break the all-time high recorded at the end of 2017.