Borderless

From the CoinDesk Global Macro newsdesk, this is Borderless - A twice-monthly roundup of the most important stories impacting bitcoin and the crypto sector from around the world. It's created by reporters Nikhilesh De, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson

On today’s show: the FinCEN files, AirTM isn’t working in Venezuela the way people hoped and stablecoin regulations are reappearing in the U.S. and Europe.

CoinDesk's inaugural episode of Borderless discusses the FinCEN Files, which showed that not only is a global superpower keeping tabs on thousands of financial transactions, but it doesn't appear to actually be tamping downon the alleged crimes it purportedly wants to halt using this data. What's more, many of these transaction records aren't suspicious. Should the government hold on to this personal and financial data for 20 years?

Stablecoin regulations are resurging in both Europe and the U.S., with government officials in both regions publishing new guidance discussing how stablecoins might be regulated and how issuers can interact with banks. The EU wants stablecoin issuers to abide by strict "e-money" rules, according to draft legislation leaked last week. Meanwhile, a federal banking regulator in the U.S. says nationally regulated banks can offer stablecoin issuers financial services.

This applies specifically to hosted wallets, meaning wallets that are controlled by a trusted (regulated) third party. Wallets where users directly control the keys do not fall into the guidance. For its part, the Securities and Exchange Commission warns that some of these digital assets may or may not look like securities, and recommends that issuers contact it prior to launching a new token.

Another stablecoin story down in Venezuela has us rethinking whether the country’s purported crypto economy is really as robust as the headlines make you think. CoinDesk contributor Jose Rafael Pena Gholam writes that opposition leader Juan Guaido’s attempted airdrop of $19 million in stablecoins to Venezuela's “health heroes” has fallen flat.

The money came from funds seized by U.S authorities. Guaido was hoping to use it to back pay thousands of health workers with a $100 bonus for three months of work, but the drop has been hampered by the Maduro regime and tech hiccups.Reporters Nikhilesh De, Daniel Nelson and Anna Baydakova discuss these issues and more.

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From the CoinDesk Global Macro news desk, this is Borderless – a twice-monthly roundup of the most important stories impacting Bitcoin and the crypto sector from around the world. On this episode, Nik, Anna, Daniel and CoinDesk tech reporter Colin Harper discuss Nigerian protestors using bitcoin, the digital yuan reaching retail users in China, the IMF talking about crypto, and more.

In Nigeria, people are protesting police brutality and demanding the abolition of SARS, or the Special Anti-Robbery Squad police unit, an infamous special forces team known for abusing and harassing citizens.

CoinDesk reporter Colin Harper joins the conversation to talk about how The Feminist Coalition, a movement advocating for women’s rights in Nigeria, has been using bitcoin to fundraise and help people hurt by the police during the protests. After the movement’s bank account was frozen, it switched to bitcoin donations, using bitcoin as a censorship-resistant tool, just as activists in another part of the world – Belarus – are doing.

On the central bank digital currency front, China is charging forward with its digital yuan project: last week, about two million people got free digital yuans in a lottery in Shenzhen. People could spend the giveaway tokens in over 3,000 local stores, as Reuters reported. The consumers haven’t been impressed so far, but maybe that’s only a beginning,

Unlike in China, central bankers in the West are not that sure about CBDCs. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a report discussing the benefits of issuing digital tokens by central banks. Maybe the most interesting part, the International Monetary Fund talks about the Big Tech stablecoin projects and what’s at stake there.

Reporters Nikhilesh De, Daniel Nelson, Anna Baydakova and Colin Harper discuss these issues and more on today’s episode of Borderless.

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This week on Borderless, tech reporter Leigh Cuen speaks with data analyst and entrepreneur Boaz Sobrado about how bitcoin became relevant to him when he had to use it at his e-commerce company.

With the changes in the U.S. presidential administration in 2016 and the strict regulations that followed it became harder to bank in Cuba. Processing payments and conducting proper international transactions were causing his company to bleed money. So Boaz turned to bitcoin to move money in and out of the country safely and provide commerce to Cuban communities.

However, bitcoin adoption in Cuba turned out to be harder than he thought. Due to COVID-19, Cuba is undergoing the worst economic crisis since the 1990s. At that time Cuba’s economic structure was so atrocious that portions of its population suffered from hunger. Boaz says, “We aren’t there yet” that it isn’t as bad as the crisis of the 1990s. However, with Western Union remittance rates going down there is less and less money in the country. This has caused inflation to rise and product delivery to the country of Cuba to become more difficult.

Listen as Sobrado discusses the informal peer-to-peer development of the cryptocurrency markets in Cuba and how the internet penetration in Cuba is accelerating bitcoin adoption.

Did you enjoy the show? We would love to hear what you think. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred service and talk to us directly via email at [email protected].

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson discuss the coming crypto taxation in Russia and India, North Korean hackers indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice and the GameStop story rolling into the U.S. Congress.

Russia is on its way to taxing cryptocurrency transactions. A draft bill on crypto taxation is now in Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, and it has just passed its first round of hearings last week. The bill says Russian taxpayers must declare crypto they receive to their wallets if its overall value reaches 600,000 rubles, or a bit more than US$8,000.

India is also moving towards crypto taxation. According to a new draft bill, the government is likely to impose a personal income tax on crypto traders and a goods and services tax on trading platforms. So crypto exchanges will have to pay 18 % from the trading fees they earn.

Around the world, it’s becoming our new reality: you deal with crypto, you tell your government about it. Danny shares personal experiences while Anna shares some fears about the future.

This week, the U.S. Department of Justice went after three North Korean hackers for allegedly stealing over $100 million in cryptocurrency from exchanges, including a handful in the U.S. Prosecutors said North Koreans have become the “world’s leading bank robbers,” using keyboards as weapons instead of guns. As longtime listeners of the pod know, they’re using that crypto to build more sinister weapons: nukes!

They even used an initial coin offering to raise money! (Not financial advice.)

GameStop goes to Congress: the U.S. lawmakers questioned Reddit and Robinhood CEOs, as well as the redditor Roaring Kitty. Hearings like this might become hits on their own, just as the Facebook hearings did a couple years ago. But should we expect any material changes afterwards? One thing is for sure: Traditional capital markets are aping right into the crypto world insanity.

Did you enjoy the show? We would love to hear what you think. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred service and talk to us directly via email at [email protected].

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Anna Baydakova and Danny Nelson discuss North Korea reportedly stealing your crypto to create nuclear weapons, Tesla rattling markets at an opportune time and Nigeria trying to ban crypto.

Starting Feb. 12, in the Chinese calendar, we are in the year of the ox, or bull; at least for now, things are looking quite bullish for crypto. Usually, Chinese users would massively sell bitcoin ahead of the New Year but the current rally is being mostly driven by institutions, not retail buyers in Asia. So it looks like the “To the Moon” show must go on!

A United Nations expert panel said North Korea used the money it extorted by cyber attacks to fund nuclear weapons development. The panel said that according to its investigations, North Korean regime-linked hackers worked all through 2020 and made the money now funding weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile programs. According to Chainalysis, the hackers used DeFi infrastructure, over-the-counter brokers and mixers to sell their crypto. So will we end up with a bit of North Korean hacker crypto one day?

Tesla hyped the bitcoin market right around the time some bad news came out of China. In February, Tesla’s annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission included the news the company put an aggregate of $1.5 billion into bitcoin. Just before that filing several Chinese government agencies publicly questioned Tesla cars’ quality and safety. Coincidence?

Nigeria is trying to curb crypto adoption, but that is not so easy. In early February, the country’s central bank sent a letter to financial institutions ordering them to shut down all bank accounts associated with cryptocurrency trading platforms. Result: Binance halted deposits in Nigeria. As a result, Nigerians turned to peer-to-peer trading platforms. Is this actually good for crypto adoption? We’ll see.

Stories mentioned in this episode:

• CoinDesk: Why a Chinese New Year Sell-Off May Not Happen This Year
• AP: UN experts: North Korea using cyber attacks to update nukes
• CoinDesk: UN Says North Korea Funded Nuclear Weapons With Crypto Hacks in 2020
• Chainalisys: Lazarus Group Pulled Off 2020’s Biggest Exchange Hack and Appears to be Exploring New Money Laundering Options
• CoinDesk: China Was Questioning Tesla About Quality Problems. Then Bitcoin Happened
• Bloomberg: Tesla Summoned by China Regulators Over Quality, Safety Issues
• CoinDesk: Nigerian Central Bank Says Its Ban on Crypto Accounts Is Nothing New
• CoinDesk: Bitcoin ‘Can’t Be Stopped’: Nigerians Look to P2P Exchanges After Crypto Ban

Did you enjoy the show? We would love to hear what you think. Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your preferred service and talk to us directly via email at [email protected].

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.