A group of major cryptocurrency firms including Coinbase, Circle, Anchorage Digital and Huobi Global are forming a new coalition aimed at cracking down on market manipulation in an effort to instill trust in the burgeoning digital asset industry. From a report: The Crypto Market Integrity Coalition, which was convened by risk-monitoring software company Solidus Labs, is also urging digital currency companies to sign a market integrity pledge that acknowledges the potential for fraud in the cryptocurrency space and the need for the industry to protect investors. "It really is about recognizing that you need entities that are focused on a fair and orderly system here, and really trying to prevent the abuses that can happen if you're not paying attention," said Kathy Kraninger, vice president of regulatory affairs at Solidus Labs and former director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The new alliance and pledge comes as regulators remain concerned the new market is safe for investors, despite its surge in popularity. The Securities and Exchange Commission has cited the potential for market manipulation as one of the primary reasons for rejecting several applications for spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

"The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Digital Currency Initiative have come up with an initial design for a central bank digital currency," reports Yahoo Finance.

Reuters cautions that the newly-released research does not suggest that the U.S. central bank will move toward launching a CBDC, a step it has said it would not take without clear support from the White House and Congress...." Instead the team "developed technology that can be adjusted as more policy questions regarding the structure and purpose of a CBDC are addressed."

The Washington Post describes it as "a system that can settle the vast majority of payments in less than two seconds, handles more than 1.7 million transactions per second and operates around-the-clock with no service outages in the case of a disruption in its network."

The Boston Globe adds that "The team noted there's a lot more work to do in the next phase, including researching various privacy features, and stressed the digital dollar remains hypothetical until the Fed decides whether to move forward with government-backed electronic cash."

Some context from the Washington Post: The ultimate product could help extend financial services to people who lack a bank account and make cross-border payments such as remittances safer and easier, said Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT. Narula, in a conference call with reporters, noted that the Boston researchers "aren't the ones making policy decision on how such a system might operate," so they have aimed to "create a flexible system that can work with a variety of models."

Along with a paper describing the team's work to date, researchers on Thursday published open-source code for the platform that would support the digital currency. Jim Cunha, executive vice president of the Boston Fed, called that a first for the central bank, intended to encourage public input that improves the technology.

One day, we will all don AR glasses, capable of serving up information geospatially tied to every house and place in our neighborhoods. But who will own and control these spatial AR layers? From a report: It's the stuff of nightmares: The other day, I found my property occupied by a stranger, who was renting it out, Airbnb style. The good news: I'm OK. I wasn't actually evicted from my own home -- at least not in this world. Someone had acquired my property in Upland, a blockchain-powered game that allows people to buy, develop, rent out and sell virtual land parcels based on real-world property borders. It's a bit like Monopoly, played on top of Google Maps, with virtual land speculation happening on a gamified version of the real world. With bright and colorful imagery, and a goofy-looking llama as a mascot, Upland emphasizes that it's all fun and games. That's true for its economy as well, as most of its in-game transactions have little to no monetary value in the real world. The person who bought my property currently makes the equivalent of 4 cents a month in Upland's in-game currency by renting it out to other players.

However, Upland has big ambitions, which include eventually expanding into AR, and providing its data via APIs to third-party developers who may one day be able to build their own game and nongame applications with it. And the company is not alone: A small but growing number of startups and crypto initiatives have begun selling and renting out AR spaces tied to real-world addresses. One day, these efforts could be key to telling your smart glasses which information to display as you look at a famous landmark, or even your neighbor's home. This brings up a ton of questions: Who should have the rights to an AR layer tied to a physical address? What does it mean that these AR properties are being divided up among early adopters before most people even know they exist? Will we see the same issues that have plagued real world real estate, including gentrification and displacement, replicated in AR?

India on Tuesday announced plans to launch a digital currency by next year and tax cryptocurrencies and NFTs as the country moves closer to recognizing cryptocurrencies as legal tender in the world's second largest internet market. From a report: Income from the the transfer of any virtual assets will be taxed at 30%, the nation's finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Tuesday. To capture details of all such crypto transactions, she also proposed a 1% tax deduction at source on payments made related to purchase of virtual assets. "No deduction in respect of any expenditure or allowance shall be allowed while computing such income except cost of acquisition. Further, loss from transfer of digital asset cannot be set off against any other income," she said in one of New Delhi's most remarkable tech and business-focused federal budgets. "Gift of virtual digital asset is also proposed to be taxed at the hand of the recipient."

Texas governor candidate Don Huffines said he is "committed to making Texas the citadel for bitcoin and has released a plan detailing the effort. "As a leader in innovation, Texas needs to lead the nation in Bitcoin & cryptocurrency adoption," it reads. "Not only by acknowledging, supporting, and promoting the industry, but by also using our natural resources and the power of our state to legitimize Bitcoin as a store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account."

Huffines says the state must stop the federal government from "discriminating against Bitcoin holders" and "trying to shut down or limit freedom-loving Texans investing in Bitcoin." Not only does the plan call for a declaration making bitcoin a legal tender but it calls for establishing the Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency Policy Commission, "which will be tasked with identifying the utility of currencies that can be recognized as accepted Texas currency."

Do you agree with what Huffines proposes or do you think he's simply pandering for votes by capitalizing on the red-hot crypto craze?

First, he forgot his PIN -- then he started looking for hackers. From a report: In early 2018, Dan Reich and a friend decided to spend $50,000 in Bitcoin on a batch of Theta tokens, a new cryptocurrency then worth just 21 cents apiece. At first, they held the tokens with an exchange based in China, but within weeks, a broad crackdown on cryptocurrency by the Chinese government meant they would soon lose access to the exchange, so they had to transfer everything to a hardware wallet. Reich and his friend chose a Trezor One hardware wallet, set up a PIN, and then got busy with life and forgot about it. By the end of that year, the token had sunk to less than a quarter of its value, come back up, and then crashed again. Reich decided he wanted to cash out, but his friend had lost the paper where he'd written the PIN and couldn't remember the digits. They tried guessing what they thought was a four-digit PIN (it was actually five), but after each failed attempt, the wallet doubled the wait time before they could guess again. After 16 guesses, the data on the wallet would automatically erase. When they reached a dozen tries, they stopped, afraid to go further. Reich gave up and wrote off the money in his mind. He was willing to take the loss -- until the price started to rise again. From a low of around $12,000, the value of their tokens started to skyrocket. By the end of 2020, it would be worth more than $400,000, rising briefly to over $3 million. It would be hard to get into the wallet without the PIN -- but it wasn't impossible.

And with potentially millions on the line, Reich and his friend vowed to find a way inside. The only way to own cryptocurrency on the blockchain is to have sole possession of a private key associated with a block of currency -- but managing those keys has been a, sometimes high-stakes, challenge from the beginning. [...] The cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis estimates that more than 3.7 million Bitcoins worth $66.5 billion are likely lost to owners. Currency can be lost for many reasons: the computer or phone storing a software wallet is stolen or crashes and the wallet is unrecoverable; the owner inadvertently throws their hardware wallet away; or the owner forgets their PIN or dies without passing it to family members. As the value of their inaccessible tokens rapidly rose in 2020, Reich and his friend were desperate to crack their wallet. They searched online until they found a 2018 conference talk from three hardware experts who discovered a way to access the key in a Trezor wallet without knowing the PIN. The engineers declined to help them, but it gave Reich hope. "We at least knew that it was possible and had some directional idea of how it could be done," Reich says. Then they found a financier in Switzerland who claimed he had associates in France who could crack the wallet in a lab. But there was a catch: Reich couldn't know their names or go to the lab. He'd have to hand off his wallet to the financier in Switzerland, who would take it to his French associates. It was a crazy idea with a lot of risks, but Reich and his friend were desperate. Gripping story.

In public, Binance -- by far the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange -- said it welcomes government oversight. At the same time, the firm was withholding information from regulators, maintaining weak checks on customers and acting against its own compliance department's recommendations, a Reuters investigation has found. From the report: The reporting shows Binance has operated outside rules that govern traditional financial firms and many crypto rivals. An opaque corporate structure has enabled Binance to offer products that many national regulators don't allow locally registered firms to sell. Binance has repeatedly declined to specify in which jurisdiction its main online exchange is based, complicating regulators' efforts to oversee its activities. And it has minimised costly client background checks. On at least four occasions, Binance declined to provide detailed answers about its operations when asked by financial authorities and business partners, according to regulatory filings and people with direct knowledge.

In encrypted Telegram messages seen by Reuters, Binance staff, including Chief Compliance Officer Samuel Lim and former Global Money Laundering Reporting Officer Karen Leong, raised worries about weak "know-your-customer" checks aimed at preventing money laundering. Three former senior Binance employees told Reuters they voiced such concerns to Zhao himself but he ignored them. Binance acted against its own compliance department's assessment by continuing to recruit customers in seven countries, including Russia and Ukraine, judged to be of "extreme" money-laundering risk in an internal report circulated in early 2020 that was seen by Reuters. Last year, Binance watered down compliance rules arranged with a German business partner, causing disquiet among some Binance staff.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump's son-in-law who acted as a senior advisor during Trump's time in the White House, was apparently interested in the idea of whether the federal government should make a cryptocurrency in 2018. In an email to then-US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Kushner asked if he could have a group of people "brainstorm" about the government creating its own digital currency, as revealed by a Freedom Of Information Act request from CoinDesk. Here's the email in full: Steven --

Would you be open to me bringing a small group of people to have a brainstorm about this topic?

http://blog.samaltman.com/us-digital-currency

My sense is it could make sense and also be something that could ultimately change the way we pay out entitlements as well saving us a ton in waste fraud and also in transaction costs... The Verge report continues... The link [included in Kushner's email] goes to a 2018 blog post titled "US Digital Currency," which was written by Sam Altman, a former president of startup incubator Y Combinator and currently the CEO of OpenAI. The post discusses how the US should create a cryptocurrency and make it legal tender in the country. (While it suggests naming the coin USDC, for US Digital Currency, there actually is currently a stablecoin named USDC, short for US Dollar Coin, but that it wasn't created by the government.) Altman's post suggests that the US cryptocurrency could have taxes built-in and that building it could help give America "some power over a worldwide currency."

For his part, Kushner suggests it could be a way to cut down on waste, fraud, and transaction costs when paying out entitlements. The outcome of his request is unclear -- the emails don't show whether Mnuchin ever responded, or if there was ever a meeting about the idea.

"Walmart appears to be venturing into the metaverse with plans to create its own cryptocurrency and collection of NFTs," reports CNBC.

"The big-box retailer filed several new trademarks late last month that indicate its intent to make and sell virtual goods. In a separate filing, the company said it would offer users a virtual currency, as well as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs." According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Walmart filed the applications on Dec. 30. In total, seven separate applications have been submitted.... "They're super intense," said Josh Gerben, a trademark attorney. "There's a lot of language in these, which shows that there's a lot of planning going on behind the scenes about how they're going to address cryptocurrency, how they're going to address the metaverse and the virtual world that appears to be coming or that's already here...."

[B]oth Under Armour's and Adidas' NFT debuts sold out last month. They're now fetching sky-high prices on the NFT marketplace OpenSea. Gerben said that apparel retailers Urban Outfitters, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch have also filed trademarks in recent weeks detailing their intent to open some sort of virtual store.... According to Frank Chaparro, director at crypto information services firm The Block, many retailers are still reeling from being late to e-commerce, so they don't want to miss out on any opportunities in the metaverse. "I think it's a win-win for any company in retail," Chaparro said. "And even if it just turns out to be a fad there's not a lot of reputation damage in just trying something weird out like giving some customers an NFT in a sweepstake, for instance."

PayPal is exploring the launch of its own stablecoin as part of its cryptocurrency push, according to the company, which confirmed the development after evidence of the move was discovered inside its iPhone app. From a report: "We are exploring a stablecoin; if and when we seek to move forward, we will of course, work closely with relevant regulators," Jose Fernandez da Ponte, senior vice president of crypto and digital currencies at PayPal, said in a statement to Bloomberg News. Stablecoins are cryptocurrencies backed and priced by the value of an existing currency or commodity.

CoinDesk: Garry Kasparov knows math. He knows logic, strategy and decision-making. Widely regarded as the greatest chess player in the history of mankind, the Russian grandmaster -- ranked No. 1 from 1984 to 2005 -- sees the world with a certain clarity. So it will delight many in the blockchain industry to learn that Kasparov, easily one of the smartest people alive, is now a champion of cryptocurrency. And it's partly because of math. Kasparov has spent his "retirement" opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin (a defiance that once got him tossed in jail), fighting for humanitarian causes and serving as chairman of the Human Rights Foundation (a nonprofit that strongly supports bitcoin as a freedom-giving tool). Now he views crypto as a way to check government power. Bitcoin offers protection against rampant government spending, says Kasparov, "because you're protected by math" -- by the logic of the code itself. Kasparov also sees merit in non-fungible tokens. [...]

CoinDesk: How'd you get into the crypto space?
Kasparov: If you followed my career and read about my early interest in computers and technology, you should not be surprised that I was very excited when I recognized the value of cryptocurrencies and NFTs. This goes all the way back to the '80s; I always tried to be at the cutting edge. It started with chess. But I also saw an opportunity to use computers and new tools to advance individual freedoms. It's my belief that technology should help people fight back against the power of the state.

How do cryptocurrencies fit into that?

Cryptocurrencies become an inseparable part of or progress, because the whole world is moving digital. And if the economy becomes more digital, so does the money. Another philosophical reason is that ... governments [have] unlimited opportunities to print money. And printing money is the most exquisite form of borrowing from us and from future generations. And I believe that cryptocurrencies -- with bitcoin as a standard -- offer a protection against this onslaught of the government, because you're protected by math. You're protected by the limited number of any code behind the respective currency. Cryptocurrencies, and all the products related to cryptocurrencies, are absolutely vital for the future development of our world.

Hungarian-born billionaire Thomas Peterffy, chairman of Interactive Brokers Group, says the online brokerage is now expanding the cryptocurrencies it offers its customers after sensing "urgency" from their clients to get in.

He still hasn't decided whether cryptocurrencies are a good investment — "I think it can go to zero, and I think it can go to a million dollars," he tells Bloomberg. "I have no idea." But he's invested a small amount just as a hedge against possible problems with fiat currency. His approach highlights the shifting attitude toward crypto by investors who once scorned or were wary of digital tokens but realized, especially in 2021, that they can't bear to miss out on the potential for big gains....

[American billionaire] Ray Dalio recently revealed he was holding at least some Bitcoin and Ethereum in his portfolio only months after questioning crypto's utility as a store of wealth. The Bridgewater Associates founder views the investments as an alternative money in a world where "cash is trash'' and inflation erodes buying power. [American billionaire hedge fund manager] Paul Tudor Jones disclosed he's invested as a hedge against inflation, and almost half the family offices Goldman Sachs Group Inc. does business with were interested in adding digital currencies to their portfolios, according to a recent bank survey.

Crypto moved increasingly into the mainstream of finance, albeit with mixed success. ProShares launched the first U.S. Bitcoin futures ETF, which attracted more than $1 billion in two days, before inflows sputtered and the price slumped since its October debut. Crypto enthusiasts are still hoping U.S. regulators approve an ETF that actually holds Bitcoin in 2022. Faring better, Coinbase Global Inc. went public and now has a $54 billion market valuation. It's founder, Brian Armstrong, is worth $9.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index...

There's still plenty of skepticism from Wall Street and the ultra-wealthy, but also pragmatism. [Multinational hedge fund] Citadel's Ken Griffin recently described the rush to embrace cryptocurrencies as a "jihadist call" against the U.S. dollar. But Griffin said his own firm would trade crypto if there were more regulation. JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon called Bitcoin "worthless" in October, but that came even as the New York-based banking giant was bulking up hiring to help its clients trade digital currencies.

The bank's clients are "adults," Dimon has said.

Speaking of "play-to-earn" games, Paul Butler, writing in a blog post: In Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, David Graeber makes the case that a sizable chunk of the labour economy is essentially people performing useless work, as a sort of subconscious self-preservation instinct of the economic status quo. The book cites ample anecdotal evidence that people perceive their own jobs as completely disconnected from any sort of value creation, and makes the case that the ruling class stands to lose from the proletariat having extra free time on their hands. It's a thoughtfully presented case, but when I read the book a few years back, I was skeptical that any mechanism to create bullshit jobs could arise from a system as inherently Darwinian as capitalism.

I've recently been exploring the themes around web3 to see if there's a "there" there, and Graeber's book has been on my mind again. One of the most apparently successful examples of web3 that people point to, aside from art NFTs, is so-called play-to-earn games. The most successful of these is Axie Infinity, a trade-and-battle game reminiscent of Pokemon. In a crypto economy crowded with vapourware and alpha-stage software, Axie Infinity stands out. Not only has it amassed a large base of users, the in-game economy has actually provided a real-world income stream to working-class Filipinos impacted by the pandemic. Some spend hours each day playing the game, and then sell the in-game currency they earn to pay their real-world bills. That's obviously a good thing for them, but it also appears to be a near-Platonic example of Graeber's definition of a bullshit job.

[...] In contrast to other games in which in-game economies have developed, Axie Infinity puts players' opportunity to make an income and transfer it to the real world at the forefront. As they put it in their FAQ, what sets Axie Infinity apart is an ethos: "We believe in a future where work and play become one. We believe in empowering our players and giving them economic opportunities." These "economic opportunities" are essentially a wealth transfer from new players to established ones. Gameplay requires the purchase of three Axies, which currently cost in the hundreds of US dollars each. [...] By blurring the line between "player" and "worker," the game has effectively built a Ponzi scheme with built-in deniability. Sure, some users will be net gainers and other users will be net losers, but who am I to say the net losers aren't in it for the joy of the game? The same could be said about online poker or sports betting, to be sure, but we would rightfully recoil if those were positioned as a way to lift people out of poverty.

The Bank of England has said that bitcoin could be "worthless" and people investing in the digital currency should be prepared to lose everything. The Guardian reports: In a warning over the potential risks for investors, the central bank questioned whether there was any inherent worth in the most prominent digital currency, which has soared in value this year to close to $50,000 a piece. The deputy governor, Sir Jon Cunliffe, said the Bank had to be ready for risks linked to the rise of the crypto asset following rapid growth in its popularity. "Their price can vary quite considerably and [bitcoins] could theoretically or practically drop to zero," he told the BBC.

The Bank's financial policy committee, set up in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to monitor risks, said on Monday there was little direct threat to the stability of the UK financial system from crypto assets. However, it warned that, at the current rapid pace of growth, such assets could become more interconnected with traditional financial services and were likely to pose a number of risks. Publishing its regular health check on the financial system, the Bank said major institutions should take a cautious approach to adopting crypto assets and that it would pay close attention to developments in the market. "Enhanced regulatory and law enforcement frameworks, both domestically and at a global level, are needed to influence developments in these fast-growing markets in order to manage risks, encourage sustainable innovation and maintain broader trust and integrity in the financial system," it said. In a separate blogpost published on its website on Tuesday, a member of the Bank's staff said bitcoin failed to fulfill many of the features required of a currency and that it risked being inherently volatile.

Thomas Belsham, who works in the Bank's stakeholder and media engagement division, wrote: "The problem is that, unlike traditional forms of money, Bitcoin isn't used to price things other than itself. As Bitcoiners themselves are fond of saying, 'one Bitcoin = one Bitcoin'. But a tautology does not a currency make." He said scarcity of the crypto asset -- which is limited to 21m bitcoin -- is among the key reasons for its attraction for investors, but this feature embedded into its design "may even, ultimately, render Bitcoin worthless." About 19m bitcoin is currently in circulation, with new coins added when "miners" validate changes to the blockchain ledger underpinning the cryptocurrency. While the ultimate number of bitcoin in circulation is not expected to be reached until February 2140, it would become harder to sustain this system over time, Belsham said. "Simple game theory tells us that a process of backward induction should, really, at some point, induce the smart money to get out. And were that to happen, investors really should be prepared to lose everything. Eventually."

Football clubs have potentially made hundreds of millions of dollars selling controversial crypto "fan tokens." From a report: Analysis commissioned by BBC News estimates more than $350m has been spent on the virtual currencies. Some of the tokens are marketed as offering real-world perks to the buyer. But critics say these perks are insignificant - one offered the chance to vote for songs to be played in stadiums - and clubs have insufficient protection for supporters.

So far, across the five major European leagues 24 different clubs have launched or are considering fan tokens, including eight Premier League sides. Most offer tokens akin to a club-specific crypto-currency - virtual coins can be bought and sold and their value rise and fall depending on supply and demand. Some clubs, such as Manchester City, also sell digital collectibles known as NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Most of the clubs offering fan tokens have signed up to a company called Socios that organises the initial sale and subsequent trading of the virtual coins - but other platforms, including Binance and Bitci, are growing too.

Visa is launching new consulting and advisory services to help its clients navigate the world of cryptocurrencies. CNBC reports: The payments processor said Wednesday its crypto advisory practice, housed within its consulting and analytics division, will offer advice to financial institutions, retailers and other firms on everything from rolling out crypto features to exploring non-fungible tokens. The move marks Visa's latest attempt to push deeper into the crypto industry. From Oct. 1, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021, the company processed $3.5 billion in digital currency transactions through its crypto-linked card schemes, according to Nikola Plecas, Visa's European crypto lead.

"Some of these leading exchanges have millions or, in some instances, tens of millions of users," Plecas told CNBC, adding that the company allows users to spend their crypto at over 80 million merchants. The company is also developing products geared toward stablecoins -- virtual tokens tied to the value of sovereign currencies, typically the dollar -- and central bank-issued digital currencies. Visa hopes its crypto consultancy can help further mainstream adoption of bitcoin and other digital currencies. Like rival Mastercard, the credit card giant sees cryptocurrencies as a key growth opportunity as it expands into areas beyond card payments.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Crypto Briefing: The U.S. House Committee on Financial Services has announced that several cryptocurrency executives will testify at a panel hearing. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of the USD Coin company Circle, is first on the list of executives that will attend the panel. The list also includes Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO and founder of the crypto exchange FTX. It additionally includes Brian Brooks, current CEO of Bitfury and former acting comptroller for the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Chad Cascarilla, CEO of the stablecoin and brokerage firm Paxos, will also appear on the panel. Paxos is best known for powering crypto services for PayPal and Facebook's Novi wallet. Denelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation, and Alesia Haas, CFO of Coinbase, will also make an appearance.

The panel will be led by Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Financial Services. Waters previously held a hearing on Facebook's proposed crypto plans in 2019, as well as other panels on crypto, digital currencies, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This upcoming panel is titled "Digital Assets and the Future of Finance: Understanding the Challenges and Benefits of Financial Innovation in the United States." The page describing the hearing suggests the goal of the event is to hold financial companies accountable to consumers and investors. The hearing will be held at 10:00 AM ET on Wednesday, Dec. 8. It will be available as an online webcast.

U.S. banking agencies provided more insight into their plans for regulating cryptocurrencies on Tuesday, issuing a to-do list of their priorities for next year and announcing a new policy that would require banks to seek permission before offering digital currency products. From a report: The Federal Reserve and other banking agencies released an agenda outlining areas of focus, including how they plan to weigh custody, crypto-backed loans and the possibility of capital standards, according to a joint statement. Separately, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said that banks must get an additional sign-off from the regulator before engaging with digital coins. "Throughout 2022, the agencies plan to provide greater clarity on whether certain activities related to crypto-assets conducted by banking organizations are legally permissible," the Fed, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Federal Deposit Insurance said in the statement.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Nigerian central bank's digital currency has lured about half a million users three weeks after it was introduced in a move to entice people away from crypto currencies. Adoption rate for the Central Bank of Nigeria digital currency called eNaira "has been excellent," according to Osita Nwanisobi, spokesman for the Abuja-based lender. More than 488,000 people have downloaded the consumer wallet -- that's needed to transact eNaira -- while about 78,000 merchants from more than 160 countries have enrolled, Nwanisobi said by phone.

The central bank is opposed to crypto currencies but that hasn't stopped Nigerians from using virtual currencies as a hedge against the nation's capital controls and to remit money. Demand is so large that individuals in the West African nation hold the world's highest proportion of such assets per capita, according to a survey by Statista. About 62 million naira ($150,000) of the virtual currency have been traded since it was introduced, according to Nwanisobi. The nation has traded 60,215 Bitcoins since 2017 to the end of last year -- valued at $3.9 billion as of Monday -- the largest volume outside the U.S., according to Paxful, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin marketplace. It has also the largest proportion of retail users conducting transactions under $10,000, according to Chainalysis.

The world's fastest-growing major financial exchange has no head office or formal address, lacks licenses in countries where it operates and has a chief executive who until recently wouldn't answer questions about his location. From a report: Started just four years ago, Binance is the exchange giant that towers over the digital currency world, a crypto equivalent of the London, New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges combined. After a burst of growth, Binance processes more trades for cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether each day, $76 billion worth, than its four largest competitors put together, according to data provider CryptoCompare.

The years of largely unfettered, unregulated growth for Binance in particular and the crypto industry broadly, however, are coming to an end. Financial regulators increasingly worry that digital assets, until recently dismissed by some as a fad, have grown so quickly they now are systemically important. In an October speech, Bank of England official Jon Cunliffe brought up the 2008 subprime-mortgage-fueled crisis and said of crypto, "When something in the financial system is growing very fast, and growing in largely unregulated space, financial stability authorities have to sit up and take notice." Binance is drawing the most regulatory attention. Authorities in a dozen countries have cautioned users in recent months the exchange is unregistered or not authorized to provide various services.