January 24th, 2022

Nearly 40% of Banks Will Offer Crypto Services to Customers in Future

In December 2021 the magazine for top banking executives American Banker published its banking forecast for 2022. The forecast is based on a survey of 175 top banking executives, including global, regional, and departmental executives from community financial institutions. American Banker magazine has a high reputation in the industry focusing on innovation, technology, and regulation.

The report ‘Flexibility, fear and fortitude: Finance faces the future’ by Lynnley Browning, finds only about 20% of banks in the world currently offer crypto asset consulting to their clients. However, beginning in 2022, it’s forecast that cryptocurrencies will play a larger role in traditional banking. In this 22-page survey report, nearly 40% of banking industry respondents from around the world stated that they may begin providing crypto-asset services to their retail customers in 2022. Approximately 10% of customers in the global banking industry currently manage their Bitcoin or other digital currencies in their bank accounts.

According to respondents, approximately 4% of all customers currently own some type of cryptocurrency. Sixty percent of respondents expect customer ownership of cryptocurrency to increase beginning in 2022, implying that cryptocurrency is gradually entering the mainstream, which is exciting news for the entire cryptocurrency market. Even though only 2% of banking executives polled said their institutions already accept cryptocurrency transactions, more people are preparing to make the historic leap in the banking industry.

Currently the report found that only two out of ten financial advisors, which the report concludes are “overwhelmingly older white men” currently provide support to their clients regarding crypto investing. “Just over one in ten manages Bitcoin or other digital currencies within client accounts. Still, while only 4% of clients of advisors surveyed are invested in crypto, six in ten advisors expect that to increase in 2022,” the report confirmed. Part of the change to providing a more crypto savvy service involves hiring a “more inclusive and representative workforce if they want to tap into their future customers. Waiting a decade to make those changes will impact the bottom line.”

The survey report also discovered that with the support of US legislators and regulators for cryptocurrency, approximately 66% of banking executives said that more policy work may stimulate competition in products such as stablecoins. BigONE believes that if these banks and financial institutions can further clarify the rules governing the management of digital assets in 2022, the existing regulatory landscape will be significantly altered.

Credit: American Banker

A connected issue is the impact on the crypto market as a result of the number of central banks researching or launching new central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) this year. “Some countries have embarked on digital currency projects as a bulwark against the proliferation of private cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. Others have set out to use CBDCs as a means of incentivizing blockchain-savvy investors and businesses to set up shop on their soil. This year will be a litmus test of which approach to CBDCs will prevail: force the use of a state digital currency at the expense of all others, or allow CBDCs to coexist among an ecosystem of other coins as a bridge between the monetary matters of state and those of the private sector,” observed a report in Forkast.

The crypto assets industry is thriving

Soon after the American Banker’s report was published, some banking institutions confirmed the good news and their involvement in the field of crypto assets. On December 30, 2021, the Swedish crypto-friendly bank Mecro Bank announced that a pilot project to launch digital asset custody services in the future is currently underway. According to the report, Mecro Bank intends to launch its own NFT collection as well as a virtual banking service experience in a metaverse-based virtual world. Mecro Bank believes that the metaverse is obviously a home for banking and financial transactions, as well as personal and business interaction. Effective financial and transaction management will be critical to make the metaverse environment as immersive and realistic as possible.

Sygnum, a Swiss digital asset bank, and trading platform, raised $90 million in a new round of financing valued at $800 million on January 6, 2022. Sun Hung Kai led the financing, with Animoca Brands and Meta Investments also participating. Sygnum, a Swiss digital asset bank, previously announced the launch of a series of DeFi token custody and transaction services, including Aave, Aragon, Curve, MKR, Synthetix, Uniswap, and 1inch Network. Sygnum has also expanded its USDC-related banking services.

Traditional financial institutions drive crypto regulatory policies

Many changes have occurred in the field of cryptocurrency regulation over the last year. As the pace of traditional financial institutions entering the field of crypto assets accelerates in 2022, it is certain that crypto regulatory policies will continue to improve. Crypto assets are unstoppable, and many countries and regions around the world are passing crypto regulatory legislation. Certain actions have been taken by the United States at the state and local levels. The mayor of Miami, for example, accepts Bitcoin wages, and miners use less expensive and cleaner energy. Will they, however, follow the lead of their South American ally, El Salvador, and treat Bitcoin and other tokens as legal tender? It will be interesting to see what happens.

The EU will continue to debate its proposed legislation, and if Switzerland’s cryptocurrency continues to heat up, the pace of legislation may pick up. As more institutions become interested in cryptocurrency, the European Union must implement crypto asset regulatory policies as soon as possible to avoid losing a significant share of the modern digital economy. Simultaneously, as the lines between financial and technology companies become increasingly blurred, reducing potential risks in the financial system will become increasingly important.

Also in Europe, the UK may see Brexit as a key opportunity to lead many EU countries, but based on previous evidence, regulators’ interest does not appear to have met expectations. The UK Treasury recently discussed the regulation of certain stablecoins, particularly those linked to the base currency or assets. As these talks progress, the UK may shift away from volatile cryptocurrencies and toward state-backed CBDCs, forever altering the UK-cryptocurrency relationship. Indeed, the UK is leading the way across Europe in preparing for the adoption of an interbank digital currency and is currently fifth in the world. However, a consumer offer remains some way off, according to a recent analysis by PwC from December 2020.

In short, the future development of the cryptocurrency market is still fraught with uncertainty, but there will be a more orderly market environment governed by regulations. This is an unquestionable industry consensus, and regulation will be more supportive of the cryptocurrency sector’s growth. “It’s right that mainstream banks take the needs of their customers crypto investing seriously, otherwise they’ll out to startups who are crypto-first. The interesting question is whether they’ll fight for greater choice for their customers in the face of CBDCs or fall in line with central bank policy and reduce consumer choice,” suggested BigONE Chairman Anndy Lian.

Original Source: https://www.securities.io/nearly-40-of-banks-will-offer-crypto-services-to-customers-in-future/

Anndy Lian

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com

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January 24th, 2022

Crypto On Jan. 24: Market Bloodbath Continues, Experts Call It A ‘Correction Phase’

KEY POINTS

Bitcoin, Ether slide
Top coins trade in red
Market cap down

The bloodbath in the cryptocurrency market that began Friday has continued with top coins Bitcoin and Ethereum trading below expectations, leading the market cap to slide 1.86% to $1.61 trillion as of 2.20 a.m. ET. Experts, however, remain optimistic, and have termed the slide a “correction phase” for the market.

Bitcoin fell 0.81% to $35,213. Ethereum slid 2.54% to $2,419, CoinMarketCap data showed.

Barring a slight uptick in Tether price, all top 10 cryptos were trading in the red. Solana, which faced yet another bout of network issues, shed 11.93%.

Meme cryptos Dogecoin and Shiba Inu saw a plunge, with DOGE down 2.08% and SHIB down 6.69%.

Experts attribute the crypto market bloodbath primarily to the tightening of regulations and rising inflation.

“The hint to uncertainties started from the tightening of crypto regulations in many countries,” Anndy Lian, Chairman, BigONE Exchange, told International Business Times. “This process of regulatory enforcement has made many new crypto investors worried about their portfolio.”

“To add on to this, as many of these new crypto traders are also heavy in stocks investments, their worries were increased when the S&P 500 and Nasdaq recorded their biggest drops since 2 years ago. Together with their anticipation of inflation and interest rate hikes from the US Federal Reserve, they sold off their crypto assets to de-risk themselves.”

Jay Hao, chief executive officer of OKX.com, a global cryptocurrency exchange, called the downward slope of the market a “correction phase.”

“Every market goes through a correction phase and similarly, crypto market is also undergoing a correction phase after touching the $3 trillion mark last year,” Hao told International Business Times.

“We might witness some inter crypto investment which will increase the market volume even if the overall market cap dips due to the falling prices,” he added.

In other news, online trading app Robinhood has announced that it has begun rolling out crypto wallets to 1,000 users from the top of the wallets waitlist. The company plans to expand to over 10,000 customers by March.

The crypto market is extremely volatile and experts recommend investors not make decisions based on the sudden shift in prices.

Original Source: https://www.ibtimes.com/crypto-jan-24-market-bloodbath-continues-experts-call-it-correction-phase-3381902

Anndy Lian

www.anndy.com

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January 19th, 2022

NFTs and blockchain key to metaverse future, crypto boosters claim

Blockchain technology, used to power cryptocurrencies and other decentralized record-keeping systems, has been struggling to find practical use cases outside ransomware and speculative projects like Bitcoin and NFTs. There have been a number of pilot projects in a variety of industries, but they’ve rarely turned into anything with significant business impact because of issues related to security, scalability, efficiency, and cost.

Now crypto proponents are looking to the metaverse as an area where the blockchain can make an impact.

NFT proponents say it is a better way of personalizing art and content in the metaverse, and say that the blockchain is a technology that can decentralize and secure metaverse content.

However, NfT’s actual use as part of the core infrastructure of the metaverse will likely be limited given those same issues of privacy, security, and inefficiency, plus the lack of legal oversight.

The most successful implementation of blockchain is cryptocurrencies, which are mainly used for speculative purposes. Like cryptocurrency, most people will be using NFTs in the metaverse for speculation, said Anndy Lian, a founding member of Influxo and Asia chairman of BigONE, a top global digital asset exchange.

And the fact that there’s a lack of legal oversight could actually be a benefit for its adoption, he said.

“Indeed, away from the hype about NFTs as high priced art work, one of their chief attractions within the crypto space is that they’re not considered securities for regulatory purposes,” he told Hypergrid Business.

There are privacy concerns regarding the blockchain. Although cryptography is involved in the sense that each transaction that’s added to the blockchain is digitally signed, the actual content of the blockchain is in plain text, unencrypted, available for anyone to read. That means that the public can, for example, trace cryptocurrency payments from wallet to wallet.

However, because of the legal limbo that crypto is currently in, there are no “know your customer” requirements such as those in place for all other types of financial activity.

For this reason, proponents of blockchain say it can prevent the kind of user privacy violations that Facebook — now rebranded as “Meta” — has been criticized for.

And since the blockchain relies on decentralized storage — every participant has their copy of the entire blockchain — there is no central control.

Through tokenization of physical assets for sale in the metaverse platforms, blockchain and NFTs can unlock commerce because this way, they facilitate exchanging of goods digitally, that could not be digitally transacted before, he said. For instance, digital passports such as those promoted by ARCx, can help with credit scoring, collateralized lending, and decentralized commerce in the metaverse, he said.

NFTs are already being used in existing metaverses such as Decentraland, but there are a lot of forgeries and duplication.

Blockchain can assure authenticity

According to proponents, the blockchain’s digital signature mechanism and distributed nature can help creators prove that they are the actual owners of particular content, and help users demonstrate that they are legitimate users.

Using blockchain could reduce NFT forgeries in the metaverse because each node verifies the status and ownership of all assets on the network, hence preventing them from being duplicated or changed, said Cynthia Cao, creator of CC is Dreaming, who is a NFT personality and a leading figure in virtual reality in entertainment.

And it’s not just about digital goods, she added.“In the future, when people upload their consciousness into the metaverse, we cannot ensure that their memories are not tampered with or controlled by anyone without the verification and authentication that blockchain provides,” she told Hypergrid Business.

Storing metaverse content, data, NFTs, images and other arts on the blockchain can ensure permanent storage of that data as it becomes immutable.

This can prevent illegal tampering of anything of value stored in the metaverse, said Luke Stokes managing director at Foundation for Interwallet Operability.

The FIO protocol is enabling artists to sign their work with an easily readable address that acts as a unique signature for their work, hence preventing NFT forgeries, he told Hypergrid Business.

But there are risks, he added.

“There is also the potential for user error, where people miscopy long complicated addresses or suffer man-in-the-middle attacks that could potentially result in millions of dollars being sent to the wrong address or stolen forever,” he said.

Many existing metaverses and virtual worlds succeed by gamifying social and business experiences.

Metaverse platforms that use blockchain have better digital-based rewarding mechanisms for such gamification, for instance through tokens and in-world digital currencies, said Dinis Guarda, who is author, founder, and non-executive chairman of LynKey, Citiesabc.com, and Openbusinesscouncil.org.

“The metaverse will empower peer-to-peer experiences that will offer jobs, financial empowerment, lending, and trading, he said. “The metaverse and NFTs certification solutions will take on the role of a virtual business-empowered financial system.”

This gamification will lead to further growth of art, fashion, collectives, history, cities, property in the metaverse, he said.

Cryptocurrencies are also being used to trade goods and services, for gaming rewards, betting, and for value speculation in metaverses. In Decentraland, for instance, users can buy NFTs with cryptocurrencies or platform token MANA.

Other examples include Citiesabc.com, a metaverse for cities, and LynKey, a virtual and augmented reality platform using crypto for trading NFTs in property and smart tourism.

Unlike fiat currencies like the US dollar or the Euro, crypto enables very cheap transactions in digital worlds, said Daniel Logvin, CEO at LedgerByte.

“We can actually use blockchain to manage in-metaverse currency,” he told Hypergrid Business. “This provides us with security and transaction verification for our purchases and trades, thus ensuring a solid and transparent economy.”

There have even been grids that used Bitcoin in OpenSim, such as YrGrid back in 2015, though none of these projects ever took off due to the high management and overhead costs of using the volatile Bitcoin currency for in-world payments.

Although gaming and art will continue to lead in adoption of metaverse and NFTs, remote working and virtual living — which increased due to COVID, will play a role in popularizing metaverse, NFTs because even the non-tech world is getting interested.

“I think we are entering a really exciting time for the mainstream adoption of NFTs,” said Influxo’s Lian. “Certainly the rise of NFTs for football fans around the world to capture unique moments and to follow their favorite players is a testament to the maturing of the NFT marketplace.

The dark side of the blockchain

Turning an image or another digital asset into an NFT does not actually create any value, said Maria Korolov, editor and publisher at Hypergrid Business. Since it’s stored on the open blockchain, there is no security for assets. In fact, there’s already an epidemic of people simply “right-clicking” on NFTs to save their own copies, with no repercussions, since the block chain no legal weight behind it. Plus, anyone can add anything to a blockchain, whether or not they are the legal owners of that content.

NFTs are thus nothing more than virtual Beanie Babies, she said.

“NFTs by themselves don’t protect intellectual property,” she said. “Anyone can claim to own IP and put it on the blockchain. And the blockchain itself is notoriously susceptible to being hacked.”

Crypto companies are high-profile targets for attackers. Hackers go after exchanges, virtual wallets, and even the blockchain itself. For example, one approach is the “50 percent hack.” The blockchain is decentralized, and if there’s a conflict between transactions the blockchain automatically opts for the transaction that’s supported by the majority of the participants. Hackers have hijacked blockchains repeatedly by using botnets to create participating nodes and then stealing millions of dollars worth of currency. This vulnerability is built into the fundamental design of the blockchain, and there is currently no known fix.

Hackers steal money from blockchains right, left and center, she said.

Finally, blockchains are inefficient compared to centralized data storage because the data is duplicated in multiple locations, and new transactions require progressively larger amount of computing power, resulting in adverse environmental impact.

“That’s why no major organization has replaced its databases with blockchains,” she said. “Blockchains are inefficient, insecure, and basically unmanageable,” she said. “A bunch of companies have done pilot projects. They issued press releases about the pilot projects. But then when they looked at how those pilot projects actually worked out, they quietly abandoned the whole thing and never mentioned it again and wrote off the money they wasted as a learning experience.”

Original Source: https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2022/01/why-nfts-and-blockchain-are-critical-to-success-of-metaverse/