Christophe De Beukelaer is the first European politician to convert his entire salary to Bitcoin. He kicked off 2022 with the bold move, hoping to raise awareness about Bitcoin and alternative monetary models, financial education and to get people talking. De Beukelaer first got into Bitcoin and blockchain in 2017, and foresees a future in which Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies play a role as a “counterpart to the traditional financial world.” He gave an interview to Cointelegraph to delve deeper into his vision for Bitcoin and his motivations behind being paid in Bitcoin (BTC). When asked about how long it took …

György Matolcsy, Governor of the Hungarian National Bank, has proposed a blanket ban on all cryptocurrency trading and mining operations across the European Union. Governor Matolcsy cited the recent crypto ban imposed by China in a blog post shared by the Hungarian central bank a.k.a. Magyar Nemzeti Bank (MNB) titled “Time has come to ban crypto trading and mining in the EU.” He also pointed out the Russian central bank’s proposal that calls for a blanket ban on domestic cryptocurrency trading and mining. Reciprocating the proposals for a crypto ban, Matolcsy said: “I perfectly agree with the proposal and also …

The European Commission has announced that a bill for a digital euro will be proposed in 2023. As first reported by Politico, EC finance chief Mairead McGuinness officially disclosed the EU’s formal consideration of digital euro legislation at a fintech conference on Wednesday. "Our goal is to table legislation in early 2023,” the Commissioner for Financial Service said. “A targeted legislative consultation in the coming weeks." The European Central Bank (ECB) is already experimenting with designs and systems for a digital euro, with a prototype expected sometime in late-2023. If a digital euro is to be implemented, it will require …

Nonfungible tokens (NFTs) are constantly in the news. NFT platforms are springing up like mushrooms and champions are emerging, such as OpenSea. It is a real platform economy that is emerging, like those in which YouTube or Booking.com gained a foothold. But it is a very young economy — one that is struggling to understand the legal issues that apply to it. Regulators are starting to take an interest in the subject, and there is risk of a backlash if the industry does not regulate itself quickly. And, as always, the first blows are expected east of the Atlantic. In …

On Jan. 31, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announced that it was pulling from its stablecoin project, Diem, formerly known as Libra. Intellectual property and other assets related to the operations of the Diem Payment Network were to be sold to Silvergate Capital Corporation, essentially meaning the end to Mark Zuckerberg and his corporations’ stablecoin aspirations, at least in their current shape. This also marks the end of a once-groundbreaking initiative that was revealed in 2019 with a promise to bring a global alternative to fiat money to Facebook’s 2-billion-strong user base. Here is how this plan went from the …

Decentralized finance, known as DeFi, is a new use of blockchain technology that is growing rapidly, with over $237 billion in value locked up in DeFi projects as of January 2022. Regulators are aware of this phenomenon and are beginning to act to regulate it. In this article, we briefly review the fundamentals and risks of DeFi before presenting the regulatory context. The fundamentals of DeFi DeFi is a set of alternative financial systems based on the blockchain that allows for more advanced financial operations than the simple transfer of value, such as currency exchange, lending or borrowing, in a …

Assen Vassilev, Bulgaria’s Deputy Prime Minister for EU Funds and Minister of Finance, said the EU member nation is exploring options for rolling out a crypto payment mechanism. According to a Friday Bloomberg report, Vassilev said the government was in discussion with the Bulgarian National Bank as well as industry players to explore crypto payments “in the short to medium term.” However, he added that Bulgaria was unlikely to become a major hub for crypto miners — many are reportedly considering leaving Kazakhstan amid political turmoil and disruptions to the Internet. The Bulgarian government may still be one of the …

On Thursday, the Iota Foundation, which oversees developments in the namesake Internet-of-Things transactions blockchain (IOTA), announced that it had been selected as one of five contractors by the European Commission to develop blockchain and distributed ledger technology in the region. According to the announcement, phase 2A aims to advance European Blockchain Services Infrastructure, or EBSI, in five areas: It will investigate the feasibility of sharding as to exponentially scale the Iota network on EBSI. Develop an approval weight consensus mechanism that will be highly flexible and allow both permissionless and permissioned use cases. Ensure any Iota-based solution for cross-border transfers …

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) is seeking stakeholder input on the use of distributed ledger technology for securities trading and settlements. The European Union's securities regulator recently published a “call for evidence” to invite stakeholders to share their feedback on the regulations for regulatory technical standards (RTS) on reporting and transparency on the DLT pilot expected to be implemented next year. Some of the main functions of ESMA include strengthening the protection for EU investors, enhancing financial markets, and fostering cooperation between members. With the call for evidence, the EU regulator’s objective is to see whether regulatory standards …

The first Bitcoin (BTC) futures exchange-traded fund (ETF) was launched in the United States back on October 19, 2021. Since then, a number of other cryptocurrency investment products have been launched in various markets. That first ETF, the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF, quickly became one of the top ETFs of all time by trading volume on its debut, and soon after, several other Bitcoin futures ETFs were launched in the United States, providing investors with different investment options. To Martha Reyes, head of research at cryptocurrency trading platform Bequant, these options are important. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Reyes pointed out that …

On Wednesday, the Banque de France (BdF), the BIS Innovation Hub (BISIH), and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) announced the success of a pilot run of a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC), titled Project Jura. The project aimed to investigate cross‑border settlement with euro and Swiss franc wCBDCs, and launched on a third‑party distributed ledger technology platform. The experimental technology explored in Project Jura first consisted of a decentralized peer‑to‑peer network of computer nodes (Corda) to validate transactions while simultaneously ensuring that all legal, regulatory, and business rules of governing nations are satisfied. Then, there was the tokenization of …

Nasdaq Stockholm has announced that 21Shares has listed their first two physically backed exchange-traded notes (ETNs) on the Swedish trading platform. The two instruments listed, with Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) as underlying assets, represent a new segment for ETNs — a type of unsecured debt security that tracks an underlying index of equities and trades on a major exchange. According to the announcement, the new ETNs will provide investors access to investment opportunities in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether. Helena Wedin, European head of exchange traded products at Nasdaq, says that exchange-traded notes allow one to invest in …