Coinbase and Binance move to diversify; Stablecoins under scrutiny

Transcript

NFTs are the hot topic in our newsroom today, yet again.

Welcome to The Daily Forkast October 13th 2021. I’m Angie Lau, Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain.

Crypto exchange Coinbase has become the latest to dive into the NFT space. Meanwhile, rival Binance, which got into NFTs back in June, has announced a US$1 billion fund it hopes will bring one billion new users into crypto. We’re going to take a look at what they hope to achieve in a whole lot more coming up.

Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

First up, two of the world’s biggest crypto exchanges have made moves to diversify their revenue streams.

Coinbase has announced the opening of a wait list for early access to its NFT platform, which it claims will make minting and buying NFTs easier than ever.

And Binance has announced a US$1 billion to push adoption of its Binance Smart Chain and develop the blockchain industry.

Forkast.News Monika Ghosh has lot more from these two.

The peer-to-peer marketplace Coinbase NFT says it will help people create NFT by tapping a few buttons.

It also says it intends to provide a social platform creating a community for artists and buyers.It’s not the first time Coinbase has attempted to expand its offerings to boost revenue.

However, the lending product it announced in June was scrapped after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said it intended to sue if it was launched.

Coinbase has also come under fire from customer complaints, with several responses to CEO Brian Armstrong’s tweet announcing the NFT platform’s launch, slamming the company’s poor customer service.

According to research compiled by the Massachusetts Student Public Interest Research Group, digital wallet complaints are on the rise, with Coinbase being the third most complained about company from 2017 to April 2021.

Meanwhile, amid problems of its own, Binance is also looking to grow its business.

It says the vision for its Binance Smart Chain Growth Fund is to introduce the decentralized world of gaming and financial service to the masses, as well as promoting awareness of Web 3.0 under regulatory pressure.

Binance has pulled back from Singapore and Australia and is in hot water with regulators in other countries, including Japan and South Africa.

With more and more non-crypto challenges getting involved and putting a squeeze on trading fee revenues, diversification seems a wise move.

For Forkast.News, I’m Monika Ghosh.

Meanwhile, stablecoins are seeing some regulatory instability, you could say, as more face scrutiny.

An IMF report on global financial stability released Tuesday says that challenges for the crypto ecosystem, where some stablecoins are concerned, include inadequate reserves and disclosure standards.

With international regulators looking to improve oversight of the industry, experts told Forkast.News a clear regulatory regime could actually help catalyze adoption.

Forkast.News Carolyn Wright reports.

Stablecoins, which are typically pegged one-to-one to fiat currency and designed to minimize price volatility, have experienced massive growth in the past year, with total market value standing at over US$130 billion.

However, a report by the Financial Stability Board said vulnerabilities in the space have continued to grow and ensuring appropriate regulation and supervision across jurisdictions is necessary.

Crypto experts told Forkast.News, it’s no surprise stablecoins have attracted increasing regulatory attention due to the potential market impact.

“This has led to global regulators looking to treat stablecoins and the companies behind them as true financial instruments or even like banks in some cases. This should lead to stablecoins ideally having little to no credit or liquidity risk in case of default”

Conn says this attention means that post regulation stablecoins would theoretically be more trustable, and Julian Hosp Cake DeFi says regulation offers multiple benefits.

” It will validate the entire ecosystem so small businesses will have the opportunity to become global businesses with the access, and they feel secure that the ecosystem is actually working for ecosystems and regions that are normally excluded. There will be, or there should be some financial inclusion.”

Implementation of regulation is currently uneven across Asia.

China has prohibited trading of any cryptocurrency, including stablecoins, while earlier this year, the Bank of Thailand outlined a framework for regulating stablecoins.

And the Monetary Authority of Singapore has granted a major payment institution license to XFERS which issues XSGD, a stablecoin backed one-to-one by the Singapore dollar.

For Forkast.News, I’m Carolyn Wright.

And finally today we started with NFTs, and hey, we’re going to end on them too.

Social media giant TikToks NFT auction has gone live.

Tik Tok Top Moments Collection was initially advertised old school style, you know, with a full page black and white text ad in the New York Times.

But the auction itself is bang up-to-date, with payments to be made in Ethereum.

The highest bid as of Wednesday morning Asia time was 6.8 ETH, or almost US$24,000.

‘Bored in the House’, a piece that the China based social media giant describes as defining the early stages of lockdown was created by Detroit rapper Curtis Roach, an NFT creator coin artist, turning boredom into dollars, And that’s a good thing for the NFT space.

Auction drops will continue until the end of the month, after which the NFTs can be traded with zero gas fees on the layer two of the Ethereum solution ImmutableX.

The NFT juggernaut showing no signs of slowing. Now where’s my PFP?

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia.

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For more, visit Forkast.News. I’m Angie Lau Editor-in-Chief of Forkast.News. Until the next time.