Last week, 5 European countries called on the E.U. Commission to create strong regulations on stablecoins. Finance ministers from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands told the E.U. Commission on Friday that regulation is needed to protect consumers and preserve the bloc's monetary sovereignty. The ministers stated that private stablecoin firms need to comply with E.U. regulations and standards. A potential proposal would mandate stablecoins all be asset-backed 1-to-1 with the euro (EUR) and other member state currencies and be held in E.U.-approved institutions. Another proposal could require stablecoin providers like Facebook's (NASDAQ: FB) Libra to register as a European entity. Also at the Bundesbank Conference, the head of the ECB Christine Lagarde noted the E.U. had fallen behind in the digital payments race.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
Mastercard (NYSE: MA) released a new platform that allows central banks to test how proposed central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) would function in the real world. The financial services giant announced Wednesday it launched a virtual testing environment that can simulate issuance, distribution, and exchange of CBDCs between banks, financial institutions, and consumers. Mastercard said the new protocol will help financial institutions understand the feasibility of CBDCs and allow them to explore new use cases like local or regional issuance, as well as compatibility with existing payment rails like cards. The platform also lets banks analyze and compare different proposed technology stacks for CBDC development. Raj Dhamodharan, Mastercard's executive VP, told Forbes the firm is already working with some central banks and invited other banks and tech firms to try the platform.
Binance announced it is contributing $100 million to support decentralized finance (DeFi) projects on its new decentralized Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and allowing BSC access to its centralized exchange, as the major exchange continues to chase after the booming DeFi space. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao unveiled the plan during the World of DeFi summit on Thursday, noting it is a "bridge" between DeFi and centralized finance (CeFi), as an integration between Binance the exchange and BSC the Binance-owned public blockchain. The firm said users can benefit from features of both CeFi and DeFi thanks to its new bridge plan. On the new platform, owners of native token Binance Coin (BNB) can enjoy more rights to the decentralized governance of the BSC when they participate in the staking consensus mechanism on the chain. Binance's new plan targets users who want to participate in DeFi while staying in the familiar centralized ecosystem.
Crypto prices rose to $339 billion this week, erasing some of last week's losses. For the majors, Bitcoin Cash (BCH) slipped into the red, but Binance Coin, Polkadot (DOT), and Crypto.com Coin (CRO) climbed. In the top 100, the biggest losers were SushiSwap (SUSHI), down 26%, Celo (CELO), down 15%, and Arweave (AR), down 13%. The biggest gainers were IOST, up 47%, yearn.finance (YFI), up 45%, and Binance Coin, up 39%. Next week traders will watch if Bitcoin (BTC) can regain the $11,000 level.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.