A top U.S. bank regulator said U.S. officials are looking to provide a clearer path for banks and their clients that are looking to hold cryptocurrencies, in order to keep control over the fast-developing asset. Reuters reports: Jelena McWilliams, who chairs the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, told Reuters in an interview on Monday that a team of U.S. bank regulators is trying to provide a roadmap for banks to engage with crypto assets. That could include clearer rules over holding cryptocurrency in custody to facilitate client trading, using them as collateral for loans, or even holding them on their balance sheets like more traditional assets.

"I think that we need to allow banks in this space, while appropriately managing and mitigating risk," she said in an interview on the sidelines of a fintech conference. "If we don't bring this activity inside the banks, it is going to develop outside of the banks. ... The federal regulators won't be able to regulate it." McWilliams' comments provide the fullest picture yet of what regulators are exploring as part of a cryptocurrency "sprint" team first announced in May. The goal of the team was to ensure cryptocurrency policy coordination among the three main U.S. bank regulators - FDIC, Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Walmart has started a pilot program in which shoppers can buy Bitcoin at Coinstar kiosks in some of its U.S. stores. From a report: The test with Coinstar, which is known for the machines that let customers exchange U.S. coins for paper bills or gift cards, began earlier this month, Walmart spokeswoman Molly Blakeman said Thursday. The pilot includes 200 kiosks in Walmart stores. That's part of a broader initiative by Coinstar, which has teamed up with a cryptocurrency cash exchange called Coinme to offer Bitcoin at more than 8,000 kiosks. The pilot includes 200 kiosks in Walmart stores.

"Bitcoin ATMs have been around for a while, including in many supermarkets," said Sam Doctor, chief strategy officer and head of research at BitOoda, a regulated crypto brokerage. "Walmart expands Bitcoin access to more people, though, and gives it further legitimacy among skeptics, should they roll it out beyond an initial pilot." Walmart is testing the service weeks after a high-profile hoax in which a fake press release said the retailer would start letting customers pay with a cryptocurrency called Litecoin. While that announcement was false, Walmart is assessing the future of crypto in its operations. It advertised a job in August to develop "the digital currency strategy and product roadmap" while identifying "crypto-related investment and partnerships."

As investors race to capitalize on surging interest in cryptocurrencies, startups are getting creative in how they onboard a generation of crypto users to their first wallets. From a report: Worldcoin is perhaps one of the most audacious efforts to bribe the world to embrace their currency. The startup, founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Alex Blania, wants to put a crypto wallet (and some of their currency) onto every human's smartphone, but in order to do so they have to build a way to determine whether someone is a unique human. Worldcoin is aiming to make their proof-of-personhood network in the least dystopian way possible, that being said, it still requires scanning a billion people's eyeballs with a 5-pound chromatic sphere called "The Orb."

The internet has developed with a very amorphous mesh of user networks. Bot networks operate alongside real people using their real identities, alongside users impersonating real people, alongside pseudonymous users. This can be a recipe for misaligned user incentives, as modern social media platforms have showcased, but when it comes to finance it can also be a recipe for fraud and inequality. Worldcoin wants to avoid all of that while ensuring equitable distribution of their currency, ensuring that each human on earth only signs up for one wallet in their network. Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania tells TechCrunch that the currency is part of a larger effort to drive a more unified and equitable global economy driven by the internet economy, something cryptocurrencies notably haven't nailed in their first several years.

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Monday ordered two unregistered cryptocurrency lending platforms to cease operating in the state within 10 days and requested three other platforms to send her office information about their activities and products. From a report: Due in part to a lack of clear regulations, crypto companies have been making various moves -- and finding out that not all regulators agree with them. James' office argued that virtual currency lending products are considered securities under the state's Martin Act, which requires companies offering such financial services to register with the attorney general's office in order to do business with New Yorkers.

One month ago El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender in the country. The Motley Fool looks at how it's playing out: Even before the launch, President Bukele's push for Bitcoin was not popular at home or abroad. The IMF refused to help fund the rollout, warning of "macroeconomic, financial, and legal issues." And Salvadorians took to the streets to protest the Bitcoin project before and after the launch. One Central American University survey showed that 68% of people did not agree with the move.

The first stumbling block in El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment was that the price of Bitcoin fell 11% on the first day, and further in the days that followed. Crypto investors may be familiar with Bitcoin's volatility. But for many El Salvadorians, who'd each been given $30 worth of Bitcoin (about 0.00065 BTC) only to see its value tumble, it was another matter... In the U.S., Bitcoin is widely seen as a store of value — an investment that people hope will appreciate over time. But El Salvador is using it as a currency. And as a currency, Bitcoin's volatility is problematic, especially in a low-income country. According to Bloomberg, 1 in 4 Salvadorians make less than $5.50 per day.

Even in a higher-income country, it would be difficult for a company to accept payments in a currency that might rapidly shrink in value in a matter of weeks. Unless the business could transfer the money immediately into dollars (which is what happens with many crypto payments), it would play havoc with things like payroll, rent, and other obligations. This is exponentially harder to manage for a family with little cash to spare.
El Salvador also experienced technical glitches in both its bitcoin ATMs and the state-run wallet, according to the article. "It is a real shame that the El Salvadorian government rushed into launching Bitcoin as legal tender without first building the technical infrastructure and popular support that would have helped its ambitious scheme.

"Nonetheless, if we check in again in a year's time, there's still a chance we'll see a different story."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Tether will pay $41 million to settle allegations it lied in claiming its digital tokens were fully backed by fiat currencies, putting a major compliance headache behind the world's biggest issuer of stablecoins even as regulatory scrutiny intensifies. For years, Tether told customers and the broader cryptocurrency market that it had $1 in reserve to back every token, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission said in a Friday statement. That claim was wildly misleading, according to the agency. For instance, from June to September 2017, there was never more than $61.5 million backing Tether, even as roughly 442 million coins were circulating at one point.

"This case highlights the expectation of honesty and transparency in the rapidly growing and developing digital assets marketplace," said acting CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam. In its enforcement action, the CFTC said Tether failed to disclose that it held unsecured receivables and non-fiat assets as part of its reserves, and falsely told investors it would undergo routine, professional audits to demonstrate that it maintained "100% reserves at all times." In fact, Tether reserves weren't audited, the agency said. Until at least 2018, Tether manually kept tabs on its reserve levels, a process that wasn't updated in real time, the CFTC said. Tether didn't admit or deny the CFTC's allegations. "Tether agreed to resolve this matter in order to move forward and focus on the future," the company said in a statement posted on its website. The CFTC also announced that Bitfinex, a crypto exchange affiliated with Tether, was fined $1.5 million for permitting retail transactions by American residents.

Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled tolerance of cryptocurrencies, which are drawing increasing scrutiny from regulators around the world amid fears they can be used for money laundering and criminal activity. From a report: Cryptocurrency "has the right to exist and can be used as a means of payment," Putin said in an interview with CNBC that was posted on the Kremlin's website Thursday. Still, he cautioned it was too soon to talk about using digital currencies for trading oil and other commodities that form the bulk of Russia's exports.

Russia has sought alternatives to trading in dollars since being slapped with sanctions in 2014 following the annexation of Crimea, and Putin accuses the U.S. of using its currency as a weapon. Crypto backers argue decentralized money will eventually replace fiat currencies issued by central banks. The Bank of Russia has repeatedly warned investors that the crypto market is extremely volatile, and digital currencies are not allowed to be used as a method of payment domestically. However, there are no plans for a blanket ban similar to China's, Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Moiseev said this week, according to Interfax.

A wild search for the U.S. dollars supposedly backing the stablecoin at the center of the global cryptocurrency trade --- and in the crosshairs of U.S. regulators and prosecutors. From a report: In July, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen summoned the chair of the Federal Reserve, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and six other top officials for a meeting to discuss Tether. The absurdity of the situation couldn't have been lost on them: Inflation was spiking, a Covid surge threatened the economic recovery, and Yellen wanted to talk about a digital currency dreamed up by the former child actor who'd missed a penalty shot in The Mighty Ducks. But Tether had gotten so large that it threatened to put the U.S. financial system at risk. It was as if a playground snowball fight had escalated so wildly that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were being called in to avert a nuclear war.

Tether is what's come to be known in financial circles as a stablecoin -- stable because one Tether is supposed to be backed by one dollar. But it's actually more like a bank. The company that issues the currency, Tether Holdings Ltd., takes in dollars from people who want to trade crypto and credits their digital wallets with an equal amount of Tethers in return. Once they have Tethers, people can send them to cryptocurrency exchanges and use them to bet on the price of Bitcoin, Ether, or any of the thousands of other coins. And at least in theory, Tether Holdings holds on to the dollars so it can return them to anyone who wants to send in their tokens and get their money back. The convoluted mechanism became popular because real banks didn't want to do business with crypto companies, especially foreign ones.

Exactly how Tether is backed, or if it's truly backed at all, has always been a mystery. For years a persistent group of critics has argued that, despite the company's assurances, Tether Holdings doesn't have enough assets to maintain the 1-to-1 exchange rate, meaning its coin is essentially a fraud. But in the crypto world, where joke coins with pictures of dogs can be worth billions of dollars and scammers periodically make fortunes with preposterous-sounding schemes, Tether seemed like just another curiosity. Then, this year, Tether Holdings started putting out a huge amount of digital coins. There are now 69 billion Tethers in circulation, 48 billion of them issued this year. That means the company supposedly holds a corresponding $69 billion in real money to back the coins --- an amount that would make it one of the 50 largest banks in the U.S., if it were a U.S. bank and not an unregulated offshore company.

With U.S. financial officials poised to to issue a report on stablecoins, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the cryptocurrencies designed to be pegged to other assets such as the dollar should be regulated and their underlying funds put into banks. From a report: "They shouldn't be like casino chips," Mnuchin said Thursday at the Bloomberg Invest Global virtual conference. "If you are going to issue a stablecoin, the actual money should go be held in a regulated bank, in a trust account and the people who hold the stablecoins should be able to exchange those for real dollars at any time." Stablecoins are a type of cryptocurrency that, by holding reserves, seek to maintain a fixed exchange-rate with a fiat currency. Bloomberg News reported Thursday that reserves of Tether, the largest such coin with a $69 billion market value, include billions of dollars of short-term loans to large Chinese companies, which is something money-market funds typically avoid. "Stablecoins should be invested in U.S. Treasuries or things that look like U.S. Treasuries -- money-markets of highly liquid, backed investments," said Mnuchin.

Miami is a city "that unblushingly loves rule-breaking and money," according to a new article in New York magazine, wondering whether Miami could ever really replace Silicon Valley as "a more natural home — and maybe even an accelerant — for the next generation of disruption fiends." On December 4, Delian Asparouhov, a venture capitalist in San Francisco, posted, "ok guys hear me out, what if we move silicon valley to Miami," and Miami mayor Francis Suarez, lying in bed at home in Coconut Grove, replied, "How can I help...?" Ever since, Suarez has been on a mission to rebrand Miami — long a place to spend money, rather than earn it — as a haven for founders who feel underappreciated in more calcified urban climes. He bought (with money from a venture capitalist) billboards in San Francisco featuring his Twitter handle and an invitation to "DM me." As he put it, "I saw the tsunami coming, got out my surfboard, and started paddling."

The flood of new Miamians who have arrived, full or part time, during the pandemic includes tech investors (Peter Thiel, David Sacks), cryptocurrency bulls (Anthony Pompliano, Ari Paul), new-media tycoons (Bryan Goldberg, Dave Portnoy), start-up founders (Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, Steven Galanis), and many more who aren't yet billionaires but think the Magic City will give them their best shot... The boom is visible in the city's crane-spiked skyline, too, with deals for Spotify, Microsoft, Apple, and TikTok either signed or in the offing. In greater South Florida, a related incursion by the finance industry — Goldman Sachs, Citadel, Elliott — is in full swing... In July, according to Redfin, Miami was the top migration destination for home buyers in the U.S., while San Francisco had the largest homeowner exodus. Suarez told me about a playful text he recently received from the mayor there, London Breed: "Stop stealing my techies." He says he replied, "Sorry, London, I love you, but no."

Already, Suarez has made gains in turning Miami into the most cryptocurrency-friendly city in the U.S. In the past six months, the world's largest bitcoin conference happened here; a crypto exchange called FTX paid $135 million for the naming rights to the NBA arena (edging out the hometown porn studio BangBros); and a city-sanctioned currency called MiamiCoin debuted, generating millions in fees for municipal coffers. Suarez also accepts campaign contributions in bitcoin. He's running for reelection this November and looks certain to win, thanks in part to hefty donations and cheerleading from Silicon Valley eminences...

The tech case for Miami isn't wholly persuasive. (The most notable local start-up is a company that sells kibble.) But it is infectious.
The article notes, for example, that "For all his enthusiasm, Suarez acknowledges that a robust tech ecosystem needs one thing he can't simply market into existence: a standout university" (with a world-class engineering department to fuel startups). Suarez's solution appears to be offering Miami land parcels to Florida Polytechnic University for a possible satellite campus teaching DeFi/crypto/blockchain/NFT technologies.

The article also points out the possibility of global warming-induced hurricanes and rising sea levels, the city's widening income gap and rising cost of living, and Miami's record number of pediatric-ICU COVID admissions.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: How about paying for your Taco Bell order with Dogecoin? Or some of Whole Food's avocado ice cream with Bitcoin. That's the goal of a new partnership between crypto payment processor BitPay and Verifone, one of the world's largest providers of those little machines you use to pay via a credit card or Venmo at a checkout line. Later this year, the newest Verifone terminals will start accepting payments for U.S. merchants from a range of cryptocurrency wallets and tokens, the companies said in a statement Tuesday. Terms of the agreement weren't disclosed.

Widespread use of tokens for purchases has been a goal that has long eluded the crypto industry, with most users focusing on speculation and merchants scared off by the price volatility of the digital assets. BitPay said it will provide greater protection from price swings since the funds will be settled promptly into the merchant's bank account in traditional currency once a transaction is completed. BitPay already processes more than 60,000 transactions a month, more than half of them in Bitcoin, according to the company. By comparison, Visa handles an average of 150 million transactions a day. While the companies didn't say which merchants will be included, some brands that Verifone works with already include American Eagle Outfitters, Macy's, Williams Sonoma, Taco Bell and Whole Foods.

Robinhood plans to start a cryptocurrency wallet next month, the company announced on Wednesday. Engadget reports: The tool will allow you to send and receive digital currencies, as well as trade them and move them off the app. If you want to take part in the test, you'll need to join a waitlist. Robinhood plans to trial the feature with a small number of users first before expanding availability to more people gradually.

The company told The Verge it expects everyone will have access to their own wallet sometime in 2022. In the meantime, you can see progress on the wallet by following Robinhood's Twitter account and blog. The company promised to share whatever feedback early users provide on the product with the community. Initially, the wallet will support Bitcoin, Ethereum and even Dogecoin. The wallet will use a custodial system, which means Robinhood will manage the keys you need to unlock it. That said, you'll have the option to move your cryptocurrencies to other platforms should you so choose.

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, "Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler said Tuesday he doesn't see much long-term viability for cryptocurrencies (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source), underscoring the importance of protecting investors in the market and bringing it under regulatory oversight. CoinDesk reports: Gensler also discussed stablecoins, which have become a growing area of concern among federal regulators. Gensler told the Washington Post that the SEC is currently putting together a report about stablecoins under the guidance of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. He also said the SEC is working with banking regulators in order to get expanded authority from Congress to regulate stablecoins. Gensler has previously compared the crypto industry to the Wild West, an analogy he expanded on during Tuesday's interview. "We've got a lot of casinos here in the Wild West," Gensler said. "And the poker chip is these stablecoins."

Gensler stressed the importance of proactive crypto regulation. "I don't think it's a good idea to wait until there's a spill in aisle three," Gensler joked. "If we don't do anything and there's never a spill in aisle three, great ... I think there's just a lot of warning signs and flashing lights that we might have a spill on aisle three and I'd rather get ahead of it." Gensler also said several times during the interview that he doesn't see private forms of money as viable in the long term, comparing crypto to the Wildcat banking era of the 19th century when banks in remote areas of the U.S. distributed nearly worthless paper currency backed by bonds and other securities. "History tells us that private forms of money don't last long," Gensler told the Washington Post. "I don't think there's a long-term viability for 5,000 or 6,000 private forms of money."

The Biden administration plans a fresh campaign against ransomware attacks through sanctions to cut off criminals' cryptocurrency pipelines, and it urged companies to report extortion attempts and better protect themselves from them. From a report: Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told reporters that the sanctions would be imposed on Suex, a cryptocurrency transferring service that's registered in the Czech Republic. He said Suex had "facilitated transactions involving illicit proceeds for at least eight ransomware variants. He said "exchanges like Suex are critical to attackers' ability to extract profits," pointing out that this was the first such action by the Office of Foreign Assets Control against a virtual currency exchange. Both Adeyemo and Deputy National Security Adviser Anne Neuberger, who also briefed reporters in a conference call on Monday evening, underscored the importance of ransomware victims coming forward and vulnerable businesses and organizations taking steps to bolster their security. Adeyemo announced new Treasury Department guidance that makes "an express statement that the U.S. government strongly discourages the payment of cyber ransoms or extortion demands."

The Biden administration is preparing an array of actions, including sanctions [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled, alternative source], to make it harder for hackers to use digital currency to profit from ransomware attacks, WSJ reported Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: The government hopes to choke off access to a form of payment that has supported a booming criminal industry and a rising national security threat. The Treasury Department plans to impose the sanctions as soon as next week, the people said, and will issue fresh guidance to businesses on the risks associated with facilitating ransomware payments, including fines and other penalties. Later this year, expected new anti-money-laundering and terror-finance rules will seek to limit the use of cryptocurrency as a payment mechanism in ransomware attacks and other illicit activities.

The actions collectively would represent the most significant attempt yet by the Biden administration to undercut the digital finance ecosystem of traders, exchanges and other elements that cybersecurity experts say has allowed debilitating ransomware attacks to flourish in recent years. Senior officials have said ransomware attacks this year have grown more severe than ever and represent a serious threat to critical infrastructure, including power operators, hospitals and banks. The Treasury Department declined to comment and the people familiar with the matter declined to specify the targets of sanctions. But to effectively disrupt illicit crypto transactions, Treasury would need to target the digital wallets that receive ransom transactions, the crypto platforms that help exchange one set of blockchain coins for another to obscure the culprits and the people that own or manage those operations, according to analysts who specialize in such transactions.

In advanced economies, cryptocurrencies are viewed by many in the financial world with suspicion -- the domain of zealous "crypto bros" and a speculative and highly volatile fad that can only end badly. Regulators in Europe and the US have issued stark warnings about the dangers of trading crypto. But in the developing world, there are signs that crypto is quietly building deeper roots. Especially in countries which have a history of financial instability or where the barriers to accessing traditional financial products such as bank accounts are high, cryptocurrency use is fast becoming a fact of daily life. Financial Times: "While everyone was paying attention to [Tesla chief executive] Elon Musk's tweets, and which institutional investor or CEO was saying what they thought about bitcoin, there was this entire story unravelling in emerging markets around the world that's really powerful," says Kim Grauer, director of research at Chainalysis, a leading data company in the sector. "There's a massive crypto footprint in many of these countries ... [and] a massive amount of entrepreneurial opportunity." Chainalysis ranks Vietnam first for crypto adoption worldwide -- one of 19 emerging and frontier markets in its top 20, with only the US among advanced economies making an appearance at number eight in 2021. "It's very striking this year, [adoption] is a story of emerging and frontier markets," adds Grauer. Separate data from UsefulTulips.org, tracking bitcoin transactions on the world's two biggest peer-to-peer crypto trading platforms, show that in the past few weeks, sub-Saharan Africa has overtaken North America to become the geographical region with the highest volume of this kind of crypto activity.

[...] Emerging markets are fertile ground for cryptocurrencies, often because their own are failing to do their job. As a store of value, as a means of exchange and as a unit of account, national currencies in some developing countries too often fall short. Unpredictable inflation and fast-moving exchange rates, clunky and expensive banking systems, financial restrictions and regulatory uncertainty, especially the existence or threat of capital controls, all undermine their appeal. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, is a case in point. Its impatient, youthful population has to contend daily with high unemployment, the vagaries of black market currency exchanges and capital controls. As the price of oil, the country's main export, dropped during the pandemic and further squeezed dollar supply, many businesses were unable to pay foreign suppliers and lenders, almost leading to the default of a World Bank-backed power plant that provides a tenth of Nigeria's electricity. For individuals sending or receiving remittances or billing customers, the lack of dollars is a constant headache.

This week the Guardian reported that a "tumultuous few weeks" awaits El Salvador as it prepares to become the first country to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender on Tuesday. In August a research note by Bank of America enthused about the new law's ability to reduce the cost of cross-border transactions (remittances account for 20% of El Salvador's GDP), increase digital penetration in a country where 70% of people still do not use banks, and attract foreign investment as a first mover in cryptocurrency adoption. Since then, however, the verdict from international financial organisations — and El Salvadorans themselves — has turned decidedly pessimistic. "The law was adopted extremely quickly, without a technical study or a public debate," says Ricardo Castañeda, a local economist. "I don't think the president has fully understood the implications of the law, its potential to cause serious macroeconomic problems and convert the country into a haven for money laundering."

The regulatory framework for adoption has yet to be published and there are rumours of delays to the Chivo app. Bankers in the capital say they have received calls from anxious clients threatening to withdraw their deposits rather than risk exposure to the volatile cryptocurrency markets. The ratings agency Moody's downgraded El Salvadoran debt over fears of "weakened governance" evidenced by the new law, and the IMF — with which the government is negotiating a $1bn loan — published a blogpost highlighting the risks of adopting crypto as national currency. "The shift from euphoria to scepticism has been very fast," says Castañeda.

The potential benefits identified by the Bank of America are probably overstated. A paper by Johns Hopkins University says the cost of remittances via Bitcoin will be higher than traditional methods, and a July survey found that nearly two-thirds of El Salvadorans would not be open to accepting payment in Bitcoin. Eric Grill, CEO of Chainbytes, which produces Bitcoin ATMs, told the Guardian that his plan to relocate manufacturing to El Salvador had faced serious challenges in sourcing parts. Local geothermal energy experts say Bukele's plan to power energy-intensive Bitcoin mining activities from the country's volcanoes are wildly optimistic.
Reuters offered an update on Thursday. "In the main handicraft market of El Salvador's capital, traders complain that with a week to go before bitcoin becomes legal tender, no officials have come to explain how it will work or what benefits it may bring."

Facebook is considering building products and features related to nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, the digital assets that have taken off with the rise of blockchain technology. From a report: "We're definitely looking at the number of ways to get involved in the space because we think we're in a really good position to do so," Facebook executive David Marcus said Tuesday in an interview on Bloomberg Television. Marcus leads F2, or Facebook Financial, the internal group developing the company's Novi digital wallet. That wallet could be used to hold NFTs, he said. "When you have a good crypto wallet like Novi will be, you also have to think about how to help consumers support NFTs," he added. "We're definitely thinking about this." He wasn't more specific about what kinds of NFT-related products Facebook might build.

Facebook's digital wallet is "ready now," Marcus said, but the company has been waiting to launch it until it can do so alongside Diem, the digital currency previously known as Libra, which Marcus co-founded from within Facebook in 2019. Plans are for Diem to offer a so-called stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar, but it's unclear when the coin will be introduced. The project faced immense pushback from lawmakers and regulators when it was unveiled, and while Facebook is still a partner on the project, Diem is now run independently.

Digital currency company Circle says it's changing the makeup of its dollar-pegged stablecoin's reserves to just cash and U.S. Treasury bonds. CNBC reports: Digital currency company Circle had claimed its stablecoin, USD Coin, was backed 1:1 by actual dollars in a bank account. In July, it was revealed this was no longer the case, with Circle disclosing in an "attestation" from auditors Grant Thornton that cash made up just over 60% of USD Coin's reserves. The other 40% was backed by various forms of debt securities and bonds. Now, Circle says it's changing the makeup of USD Coin's reserves once again, with just cash and U.S. Treasury bonds underpinning the stablecoin.

Centre, a consortium founded by Circle and crypto exchange Coinbase which developed the stablecoin, unveiled the change on Sunday. "Mindful of community sentiment, our commitment to trust and transparency, and an evolving regulatory landscape, Circle, with the support of Centre and Coinbase, has announced that it will now hold the USDC reserve entirely in cash and short duration US Treasuries," Centre said in a blog post. "These changes are being implemented expeditiously and will be reflected in future attestations by Grant Thornton."

PayPal is launching its cryptocurrency service in the U.K. From a report: The U.S. online payments giant said Monday it would let British customers buy, hold and sell digital currencies, starting this week. It marks the the first international expansion of PayPal's crypto product, which first launched in the U.S. in October last year. "It has been doing really well in the U.S.," Jose Fernandez da Ponte, PayPal's general manager for blockchain, crypto and digital currencies, told CNBC. "We expect it's going to do well in the U.K." PayPal's crypto feature lets customers buy or sell bitcoin, bitcoin cash, ethereum or litecoin with as little as 1 pound. Users can also track crypto prices in real-time, and find educational content on the market. Like the U.S. version of the product, PayPal is relying on Paxos, a New York-regulated digital currency company, to enable crypto buying and selling in the U.K. PayPal said it has engaged with relevant U.K. regulators to launch the service.