Mon May 15

15 May 10 AM

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In the news today; Citi India Completes First Blockchain Transaction, Binance Leaves Canada & New York Legislator Proposes Stablecoins for Bail Payments

⛓️ Citi India Completes First Blockchain Transaction: Citi India has completed its first blockchain-enabled Letter of Credit (LC) transaction on Contour, a blockchain-based platform for trade finance. The transaction was for Cummins India Limited. The LC was issued by Citibank NA, Mumbai, and was used to finance the import of goods from a supplier in China. The transaction was completed in a matter of minutes, which is significantly faster than the traditional process of issuing an LC. Contour's decentralized global trade finance network has proven that LC processing time can fall by as much as 90%. Under the LC, document presentation usually takes 5-10 days, while for Cummins it was completed in three hours. This also marked the first domestic end-to-end blockchain-enabled LC transaction completed on Contour in India.

🏃🏻 Binance Leaves Canada: The largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world announced that it would be discontinuing its services in Canada due to recent regulatory guidance concerning stablecoins and investor limitations. The company stated that it had delayed this decision in order to explore alternative options to safeguard its Canadian users, but it had become evident that no viable alternatives existed. Canada implemented new requirements in February that included heightened expectations for the custody and separation of crypto assets held on behalf of Canadian clients, a prohibition on offering margin, credit, or other types of leverage to any Canadian client, and a restriction on allowing clients to purchase or deposit stablecoins, which are crypto assets tied to the value of an underlying asset.

🪙 New York Legislator Proposes Stablecoins for Bail Payments: A recently introduced Democratic bill in New York State has proposed authorizing stablecoins as acceptable forms of bail payments and calls for collaboration between key officials, namely the commissioner of Taxation and Finance and the director of the Office of information technology services, to establish regulations and guidelines. Introduced by Assembly Member Latrice Walker on May 10, the bill aims to identify suitable fiat-collateralized stablecoins for bail payments and create an efficient system for accepting, recording, and processing stablecoins as a means of securing bail. In cases where the court allows bail payments with stablecoins if the value of the stablecoins drops by over 50% since the bail was posted, the court has the authority to request additional bail.

What Is Worldcoin: Worldcoin is an ambitious crypto start-up led by Alex Blanca. It intends to bring widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies by giving away tokens. But there's a catch: participants must be willing to have their eyes scanned on registration.