This week Australia’s living God made international headlines by declaring a research project into crypto currencies.
The Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) on a research project to explore use cases for a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in Australia.
The RBA announce coincides with the announcement by the Senate Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre.
Australians need to ensure that the RBA and the Federal Parliament does not impose totalitarian control through the Central Bank Digital Currency. Australia is headed down a path with little democratic consent and there is a lot of uncertainty were public policy is going in Australia.
There is a possibility that CBDCs will improve economic life in Australia, but there is also a possibility that it may not. The RBA cannot be allowed to alter economic life in Australia without a democratic mandate.
The Prime Minister and Treasurer need to explain why CBDCs are being developed in Australia and what is the public policy case.
The Australian people must ensure that physical cash is never eliminated and that freedom and privacy remains the corner stone of Australia’s payment system and economic life.
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Cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network Ltd. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the latest casualty of a $2 trillion crash that has wiped out some of the industry’s biggest names and exposed hundreds of thousands of individual investors to steep losses.
We can again see the cross-leverage between large crypro-firms, how individuals are at the end of the unsecured creditor queue, and that many will lose their shirts in the largely unregulated and speculative market.
Celsius, which has more than 100,000 creditors, said it took the step to stabilize its business and work out a restructuring for all stakeholders. The filing was made in the Southern District of New York and listed Alameda Research, the trading firm co-founded by crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, among major creditors.
The platform held about $4.3 billion of assets against $5.5 billion of liabilities as of Wednesday, according to court papers. The company has been trying to obtain new financing from third parties.
Celsius invested about $500 million in Celsius Mining and even prepared it for an initial public offering in May.
“The Mining Center is an essential driver of growth in the debtors’ business and will allow the debtors to expand and more profitably mine Bitcoin.” according to the filing.
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Well, those following my channel over recent years will know that I have been quite skeptical of Crypto wave, and while Crypto has gone through several major drops in its history, this time could be different. I was not impressed with so called celebrities starting spruiking them, including Kim Kardashian, but when financial mainstream started getting involved, my concerned grew. In the US, Fidelity’s plans to offer Bitcoin in 401(k)s – their equivalent of superannuation – could impact an entire generation.
Its worth recalling the sector spiked to around $3 trillion in total assets last November, before plunging to less than $1 trillion, with Bitcoin and a range of altcoins plunging from record highs.
What started this year in crypto markets as a “risk-off” bout of selling fueled by a Federal Reserve suddenly determined to rein in excesses has exposed a web of interconnectedness that looks a little like the tangle of derivatives that brought down the global financial system in 2008. The collapse of the Terra ecosystem — a much-hyped experiment in decentralized finance — began with its algorithmic stablecoin losing its peg to the US dollar, and ended with a bank run that made $40 billion of tokens virtually worthless. Crypto collateral that seemed valuable enough to support loans one day became deeply discounted or illiquid, putting the fates of a previously invincible hedge fund and several high-profile lenders in doubt.
The recent crypto plunge, with Bitcoin down about 70% from its peak, is fueling widespread financial troubles for companies involved in the space. Lenders like Celsius Network, Babel Finance and Vauld have suspended withdrawals, while firms such as Coinbase Global Inc. are cutting jobs. This is what is now being called a crypto winter – but will spring ever come?
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If you string together recent statements from entities like the Bank For International Settlements, IMF, Federal Reserve and other non-elected entities a frightening story emerges as Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) are deployed to give Central Banks even greater powers, impose cross-border solutions (some would say a global currency) and remove more freedoms from society.
This is being talked about top-down as it were, without proper local consultation and buy-in. The future they portray is frightening.
To make the point I have pulled together material from a number of relatively difficult texts, but see the summary section in the contents section to cut to the chase.
[CONTENT]
0:00 Start 0:15 Introduction 1:25 BIS Report – Digital Money 6:25 BIS New Public Policy 8:30 IMF Future Of Money 15:00 Federal Reserve on CBDC 19:23 Literary Review on CBDC and Monetary Policy 24:50 Summary and Conclusion
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Another causality of the crypto crash: Australia’s largest bank has paused the launch of cryptocurrency trading through its app amid turmoil and uncertainty in the market. Commonwealth Bank announced in November plans to allow its customers to buy and sell cryptocurrency through its app. But the Guardian reported today that has now been put on hold.
It is a tumultuous time for cryptocurrency. Stablecoin Terra collapsed this month, causing an effective crypto crash that wiped between 15% and 25% off the value of most major cryptocurrencies.
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
Every day data snips are flicked across the web to facilitate tailored ads being served to our devices. But are we aware of what is going on under the hood – and of the concerns of regulators and market analysts?
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The U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority said last week that it had issued notices to over 50 companies that advertise cryptocurrencies, asking them to review their ads to ensure compliance with existing rules.
The ASA has published several rulings about the advertising of cryptocurrencies which fall within its remit. Ads for cryptocurrencies have been ruled misleading and socially irresponsible and also in breach of rules which apply to ads for financial products.
In Australia, it’s a pretty unregulated field. Grey Yanco, ASIC’s executive director of market supervision said advice on cryptocurrency and digital currency could not be monitored by ASIC due to loopholes caused by cryptocurrency not being registered as a financial product.
He told the ABC the lack of protections were ‘concerning’ for the commission.
‘ASIC is not able to regulate crypto assets that are not financial products. So if you do invest in those products, you’re effectively on your own,’ he said.
And I would add the general advertising standards in Australia provide little or no protection other than advertising shall not be misleading or deceptive or be likely to mislead or deceive and should be clearly distinguishable as an ad.
So I believe the template of the UK reforms should be copied here. And the black hole where ASIC has no role in supervising crypo needs to be closed.
Go to the Walk The World Universe at https://walktheworld.com.au/
Michael Cowling Associate Professor – Information & Communication Technology (ICT), CQUniversity Australia penned an important article in The Conversation today. And raises some important questions for us to consider, as the ABC turns on account login and personalisaton services.
The ABC says that for iview you can Continue Watching where you left off across all devices logged in to your ABC Account, Create a Watchlist to keep track of your favourite shows, Access your Viewing History, Create a profile for members of your household and Receive personalised recommendations based on what you watch.
For the Listen app it says you can Continue listening where you left off across all devices logged in to your ABC Account, Create a Playlist to listen to programs uninterrupted, Use Favourites to keep track of shows and podcasts, Access your Listening History, Choose Your News with a broader offering of local and topical news content andUse the Call-In and Text-In feature to conveniently engage with a range of ABC radio programs He wrote: Last week, the ABC announced it will begin to track the viewing habits of all users of its iview streaming platform from March 15. This will be done by making users create an account and log in to watch shows and “benefit from the next stage of personalised services” such as “program recommendations [and] watchlists”.
The change was initially planned for the middle of last year, but was delayed after heavy criticism from privacy experts and others over the proposed arrangements for sharing and recording data. One point of contention was the ABC’s plans to share viewer data with Facebook and Google.
Significant amounts of information could be inferred from our viewing habits: everything from our political leanings to our attention span. What that can then be used for is anyone’s guess.
That’s not to say you shouldn’t create an account, but rather that you need to go in with your eyes wide open. Think about what iview means to you, what data might be shared, and how it might be used. And then decide if you really love Bluey all that much after all.
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