Chainlink (LINK) is integrating with CenterPrime to bring a foreign exchange, or FX, rate data feed from the Korean banks to the DeFi space. “A breakthrough for Korean fintech industry” CenterPrime, a Hyperledger based project, has access to the Korean open banking API that streams FX rate data from several local banks. According to CenterPrime’s press release, this is a major milestone for the Korean fintech space. They noted: “This integration with Chainlink marks a major breakthrough for the Korean fintech industry. For the first time in history, applications will be able to access decentralized foreign exchange rates compiled by …

Ryan Radloff, CEO of custody solution Kingdom Trust, recently explained a vast number of Americans do not hold Bitcoin (BTC) in their retirement accounts. "There's 7.1 million Americans that have already made the leap to buy Bitcoin or take the dive into our industry so to speak, and have a retirement account, but don't have Bitcoin in their retirement account," Radloff told Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano in a July 18 interview. People have more to spend on Bitcoin in their retirement accounts Retirement accounts allow the public to put money into a long-term investment fund, with the stipulation …

Major international banks like Credit Suisse and HSBC are reportedly scrutinizing their Hong Kong clients amid the ongoing protests over China-backed national security law. According to a July 19 report by Reuters, global banks including Credit Suisse, HSBC, Julius Baer, and UBS are now screening their clients in Hong Kong on potential ties to the city’s pro-democracy movement. Social media spies Citing a group of anonymous people familiar with the matter, the report says that the banks are scanning clients’ records for political and government ties in order to impose additional diligence requirements. The records include comments made by clients …

Decentralized finance has become one of the hot topics in crypto this year. Although activity and volume in the DeFi space still lag behind its popularity, this is starting to change as novel protocols become available. In fact, according to a recent report by Consensys, the amount of Ether (ETH) locked and active users on DeFi platforms has soared after being “fairly stagnant” during the rest of the year due to Compound’s release. DeFi tokens have also been the topic of much discussion, as they have outperformed Bitcoin in the price charts week after week. In fact, Compound’s COMP token …

The crypto market may finally see a Bitcoin ETF approval, although regulators need more time. “We think a Bitcoin ETF is a matter of when, not a matter of if,” Grayscale Investments managing director, Michael Sonnenshein, told Morgan Creek Digital co-founder Anthony Pompliano in a July 15 interview. “The regulators have done a fantastic job of staying ahead of the curve on the digital currency asset class as a whole,” he added. The crypto space moves fast Explaining the speed at which the global digital crypto world moves, Sonnenshein described the clarity U.S. regulatory bodies had provided the industry stems …

Sky Guo, founder of the Cypherium blockchain, predicts that central bank digital currency cross-border payments will happen “in the next couple years” or “even sooner”. In an interview with Cointelegraph on July 13, Guo said that CBDC development among central banks makes it likely that certain countries in European Union, China and America, will take the lead and experiment with cross-border payments sooner than expected. CBDC cross border challenges Countries around the world are experimenting with CBDC pilots domestically, such as ride-sharing giant Didi signing “a strategic partnership” with the Digital Currency Research Institute of The People's Bank of China. …

Thomas Lambert, Daniel Liebau, and Peter Roosenboom from the Rotterdam School of Management suggest that Security Token Offerings are better at financing start-ups than Initial Coin Offerings. Their research was published on July 14 via the University of Oxford Business Law blog. The research paper pointed out that although ICOs and STOs are both issued on distributed ledgers, the idea behind an ICO is “value creation for a community. Utility tokens in ICOs can only grant holders with consumptive rights on services or products and can not be seen as a “financing mechanism”. However, STOs can. Researchers explained that: “Tokens …

The five-day Unitize virtual blockchain conference organized by BlockShow and San Francisco Blockchain Week ended with the final session on Friday. The event saw appearances from Heath Tarbert, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission; Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum; and Tim Draper, a serial blockchain investor, as well as other speakers from a diverse pool of market segments both within and outside the crypto space. Blockchain adoption, decentralized finance, central bank digital currencies and the future of Bitcoin (BTC) dominated the conversation in many of the panels. The event also saw speakers chart possible paths forward for …

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, or OCC, launched a project aimed to improve financial inclusion of underserved populations. Called REACh, which stands for Roundtable for Economic Access and Change, will bring together banking industry leaders and national civil rights, business and technology organizations to identify and reduce barriers and increase access to capital and credit. The group met on July 10 to start looking for projects the group will tackle. Party of the roundtable is to see which policy and structural issues on the national and local levels that prevent access to credit. Brian P. Brooks, the …

Benjamin Soh, founder of blockchain development firm STACS, said that institutional players, not business-to-consumer companies, will drive the mass adoption of financial infrastructure built on blockchain technology. During the Unitize virtual conference, Soh said that if they could bring bank institutions to use the blockchain, millions of bank customers will automatically be a part of the blockchain finance infrastructure without them even knowing. Providing bank customers with a blockchain-based wallet while still using the traditional payment gateways will be the necessary first step towards bringing the efficiencies of distributed ledger technology to the financial system, Soh added. Asia is leading …

In its first-ever, the Chinese steelmaker Nanjing Iron and Steel Company said it has completed an iron ore trade on the blockchain. The steel company obtained a $16.87 million shipment of steelmaking ingredients from the joint venture between the multinational mining group Rio Tinto and Hancock Prospecting Pty. Ltd. The shipment included 170,000 tonnes of Australian iron ore fines and lump. According to Reuters, the dollar-denominated transaction was supported by Singapore-based DBS Bank and the trade finance platform Contour. This marks yet another blockchain-based trade settlement by the world’s second-largest mining group, Rio Tinto. In May, China Baowu Steel Group …

Kyber Network just put a protocol upgrade into operation on its mainnet in tandem with its decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO. Kyber fired up its Katalyst Protocol Upgrade as well as its decentralized finance, or DeFi, solution — KyberDAO, the Kyber Network said in a July 7 blog post. The upgrade caters to the DeFi move Keeping up with the DeFi wave, Kyber Network put Katalyst in play to help with KyberDAO's liquidity, the post said. "In addition, the KyberDAO will empower the Kyber and DeFi community with an actual stake in Kyber’s future, and allow them to contribute directly …