The Philippine central bank is studying the feasibility of its digital currency. At the same time, the governor Benjamin Diokno said that the technology following digital tokens could advance the delivery of financial services, reported Bloomberg. Diokno reportedly said that digital tokens “expand reach and lessen costs of financial services” and could also “help the central bank eventually reduce the use of fiat money.“
Blockchain News
China’s Ningbo Development Zone, in Zhejiang Province, has formed a blockchain cooperation deal with Alibaba, one of the nation’s biggest e-commerce companies. As reported by BL News, Alibaba’s Ant Group will co-develop a supply chain and financing service platform that will reduce the overheads incurred by contractor drivers and logistics companies. The companies declared that they would also co-build a credit management system using blockchain technology and cooperate on cloud-related matters. The state-level development zone is the core of Ningbo’s industrial sector and is home to scores of state-owned and private firms.
Ethereum Classic Labs (ETC Labs) has partnered with blockchain research and development firm ChainSafe and provider of Web 3.0 infrastructure OpenRelay to develop and test security responses, aiming to boost its defenses against 51% attacks. Per a post by ETC Labs and its ETC Core Dev Team, this is a part of its Network Security Plan, according to which the news partners will be collaborating to increase 51% attack resistance and to implement immediate technical responses to make the network more secure, they said.
The Free Democratic Party (FDP), the fourth-largest political party in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, has missed using a blockchain network to secure “major state projects” remain accountable to the government, the public, and other stakeholders. In its original bill, the FDP stated that it wanted the government to be allowed access to audits and additional information on an open blockchain network, but failed to gain support from the other Bundestag parties and was officially rejected, per a parliamentary bulletin.
Exchanges News
Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao, stated the conception of the so-called Innovation Zone, which the post said will permit users to trade newer token offerings from their Binance account, while also “protecting less suited users from being exposed to the “risk” that comes with trading them.” Zhao continued that the exchange can list a coin without being in contact with the project founders, and have done so before.
bitFlyer Europe, a subsidiary of the Japanese crypto exchange bitFlyer, said it had opened a partnership deal that will enable Europe-based clients to make deposits via money transfer platform PayPal. According to a press release shared with, the subsidiary’s Chief Operating Officer Andy Bryant said, “Thousands of bitFlyer users already use PayPal for fiat transactions. Now, users can purchase bitcoin (BTC) and other [cryptoassets] in the same way too.”
Crime News
A recent contractor at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, or CSIRO, Jonathan Khoo, who mined crypto using state-owned supercomputers, has avoided jail. As claimed by The Sydney Morning Herald, Khoo was directed to achieve 300 hours of community service and to continue counseling. He had mined AUD 9,420 (USD 6,840) worth of cryptocurrencies and deposited these to his ethereum (ETH) and monero (XMR) wallets in 2018 while diverting the required computing power and costing the agency AUD 76,668 (USD 55,677), the report said.
Mining News
Power plants in Iran started to see the crypto mining industry as a chance to boost their revenues, reported The Tehran Times. With the energy authorities worrying about the pressures exerted by crypto mining on the electrical grid, said the article, individual power plants recommended offering their excess electricity exclusively to the cryptocurrency miners. While the government agreed to the proposal, it also noted that the power plants wouldn’t be able to profit from the government subsidies on their fuel supplies. In January, the Ministry of Industry, Mining, and Trade reportedly issued more than 1,000 licenses for cryptocurrency mining units.
Collaborative mining platform B.TOP stated its connection with the financial service platform Matrixport to accept tether (USDT) payments on its website. USDT fees from B.TOP users would be collected and studied for B.TOP by Matrixport’s enterprise-grade ‘Cactus Custody,’ said the press release. New B.TOP users also have the option to pay in tether in addition to the previous bitcoin (BTC) payment option, providing a workaround when a payment option has higher network congestion or transaction fees, it added.
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