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Japan Plans to Allow Local Listing of ‘Foreign’ Stablecoins Such as USDT and USDC: Nikkei

Japan Plans

Japan Plans-Japan’s Financial Services Agency is seeking feedback on new regulations that would allow stablecoins issued outside the country to be listed on local exchanges, Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported on Monday.

Under the draft regulation, local distributors will be allowed to handle payments-focused stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies stabilized against the value of sovereign currencies like the U.S. dollar, if they maintain sufficient assets.

Japan Plans

Another article published on Monday said the regulations stand to reverse a ban on the distribution of foreign stablecoins locally. Local exchanges don’t currently list stablecoins like USD Coin (USDC) and tether (USDT) that are issued by foreign entities.

Following the collapse of multibillion-dollar stablecoin issuer Terra earlier this year, Japan’s parliament passed a set of rules specific to stablecoins and focused on investor protection.

The new rules on foreign stablecoins would be applied in conjunction with the revised Payment Services Act, according to Nikkei. The framework is open for public comment until Jan. 31 and will come into force later next year.

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Alibaba ’s Alipay & Taobao Platform to Launch Digital Yuan Pay Functions

Alibaba

Alibaba-An affiliate of the Chinese tech giant Alibaba has claimed that it will allow customers to pay with the digital yuan on its Taobao e-commerce platform, in addition to the market-leading Alipay e-payments platform.

Per Sina Technology, the announcement was made by Li Chen, Chief Compliance Officer of the Ant Group – Alibaba’s fintech arm. Ant operates Alipay and Alibaba’s online banking arms. Li Chen was quoted as telling attendees at a digital trade forum in Zhejiang:

“Alipay has joined the digital yuan acceptance network. It is the first payment platform to support the digital yuan.”

Li Chen added that a digital yuan wallet “fast payment function” had been launched in Taobao – allowing customers to use digital yuan holdings at checkout.

The official added that a slew of digital yuan-related services would be “launched in batches” in the weeks and months ahead.

The new Alipay link means that digital yuan holders in the pilot zone can also use their coins to pay for goods and services on Alibaba subsidiaries, such as Tmall-Mart, the tech giant’s “smart” online supermarket, the Hema chain of grocery stores, and its Ele.me food delivery network.

The media outlet added that Alipay and Taobao app users could get started with digital CNY pay right away – by simply updating their apps. At checkout, they can find prompts that lead them to digital yuan wallet payment options.

Alipay officials also added that users could search for a new “paying with the digital yuan” section in the Alipay app to “learn how to use” the coin.

Why Does it Matter if Alipay & Taotao Embrace the Digital Yuan?

Taobao is China’s answer to Amazon and is arguably its most popular e-commerce website, alongside JD.com. The latter has been exceptionally active in the digital CNY sphere, and has pioneered a range of giveaways in pilot zone areas.

Alipay and its closest rival WeChat Pay have dominated the Chinese e-payments market in recent years – and have cornered some 15% of the total national payments market. WeChat Pay is the brainchild of the tech titan Tencent.

The government has repeatedly claimed that the digital yuan is not being positioned as an Alipay/WeChat Pay rival, although some believe that Beijing is planning to break up the tech giants’ duopoly.

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Ethereum Turns Deflationary Amid Market Turmoil – Future of Money?

Ethereum

Ethereum ’s native token ETH is once again turning deflationary, as more tokens are burned than new ones issued, leading some proponents to point to ETH as a future sound money.

The latest deflationary turn for ETH happened during the crypto market crash over the past few days, as transaction fees on ETH spiked as traders rushed to send tokens to and from exchanges. And as Ethereum users know by now, the network initiated its new token burn mechanism with the EIP-1559 upgrade in August 2021. The upgrade created a system where a portion of transaction fees are burned, making the issuance of ETH – at times – deflationary.

As a result of this new burn mechanism, more tokens are burned as more ETH is transacted with and transaction fees paid.

According to data from ETH tracking website Ultrasound.money, the ETH supply has declined steadily since October 8, and turned negative on November 9. Since then, the supply has continued to fall at a faster rate, reaching an annual -1% supply growth at the time of writing.

Ethereum

Worth noting, however, is that the reduction in ETH supply has come as prices of the token have nosedived along with the broader crypto market. Over the past 7 days, the price of ETH was down by more than 16% over the past 7 days, although it still remained almost unchanged when looking at the month overall.

Ethereum

Ethereum-Not a new idea

The idea of ETH as ultra sound money was brought up as early as in March of 2021 by Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake in an interview on the Bankless podcast:

However, others are of a very different view, with for instance Bitcoin (BTC) proponents often arguing that the predictable and unchangeable issuance of BTC is what makes that sound money, and that the same cannot be said about ETH.

Among those who have argued for this is the early bitcoiner Kyle Torpey, who last year wrote in an op-ed for Cryptonews.com that ETH is far from ultra sound money.

In other words, the issue of whether ETH is – or can ever become – ultra sound money is still up for debate, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.

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Fantasy Card Game Calvaria Could Become the Top P2E Platform

Fantasy Card Game-Battle card game Calvaria raced through stage 1 of its presale and is now 50% on its way to selling out stage 2 after passing the $350,000 mark.

The new gaming project is to revolutionize the world of blockchain gaming by solving one of its biggest problems – a small player base – in a unique way.

While previous play-to-earn (P2E) games have struggled to attract players, despite their great potential, Calvaria will release two versions of its main game, Duels of Eternity – one P2E and one free-to-play (F2P).

Calvaria Developers to Solve Two Blockchain Gaming Issues

The founders of Calvaria believe there are two major reasons casual and traditional gamers are not making the switch to P2E.

The first is that players can’t even try a game without it being prohibitively expensive – needing to purchase expensive NFTs or in-game tokens to take part.

Fantasy Card Game

The second is that players require some level of technical knowledge, such as how to use a crypto wallet, which can be offputting. 

Calvaria is aiming to solve these two issues with its F2P game.

The game, which will be available in app stores, will be totally free to try and play, with developers hoping the game itself will attract some players over to the blockchain.

Secondly, the free version will include a visible tracker showing how much a player could have earned had they been playing the P2E version.

Finally, the F2P game will include a gamified educational mode that teaches players about blockchain technology and distributes rewards.

Visit Calvaria Presale Now

What is Duels of Eternity?

Duels of Eternity is the main game in the Calvaria ecosystem and is a battle card strategy that is set in the afterlife.

Players align to one of three warring factions – which have their own unique traits and strengths and battle other players using their wits, knowledge, and power-ups.

Fantasy Card Game

Furthermore, there is a single-player campaign that will expand the Calvaria universe and where players can earn unique cards and boosters that can be used in the player vs player mode.

To ensure continued growth and interest in the game in the future, Calvaria will incorporate seasonal versions and tournaments, as well as develop an eSports team.

Fantasy Card Game-RIA Token Presale

As mentioned above, the Calvaria token is currently in the second stage of its presale and has already sold more than $350,000 of RIA tokens.

Built on the super-fast blockchain Polygon, RIA is the main ERC-20 token of the ecosystem that will be tradeable on exchanges and power governing decisions in the Calvaria decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

Fantasy Card Game

Another token eRIA, will exist for in-game purchases and will be the token used to distribute rewards in matches and tournaments. 

There will be 10 stages of the presale in all, with 30% of the max 1 billion supply for sale.

Read through the Calvaria whitepaper or join the Telegram group for more information.

Visit Calvaria Presale Now

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Billionaire Chamath Predicts This Crypto Sector Will Transform All Financial Assets

Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya believes that decentralized finance (DeFi) will eventually allow people across the world to monetize and financialize all of their assets, allowing them to be stored on the blockchain.

Billionaire

Palihapitiya, who is a former vice president at Facebook, is currently best known for running his California-based venture capital firm Social Capital. 

“All the leakage you have today goes away in a world of DeFi because you will financialize every single asset possible. You know you’ll financialize your homes. You’ll financialize your cars. You’ll financialize your watches, your jewelry, and your art. You’ll financialize every random thing,” he told the Savvy Finance podcast.

“By monetizing it and financializing it, you can borrow against it, you can trade it, you can pull forward value into the future against it. But it will all be tracked,” according to Social Capital’s CEO. 

Palihapitiya agreed with the host that people would even be enabled to monetize and financialize their careers with the use of the technology.

At the same time, the investor said that, in the long-term, the government would require an “off-ramp to taxation” of such assets, as, for instance, “a physical house exists in the world. You can’t hide the existence of a physical house.”

“Some assets will live anonymously. And those are the assets that don’t need to exist in the real world. But I think what this will create is a world where all of these assets that actually really exist in the world — it will be fine that it exists and that people get taxed on it, but it will be much more legitimate and simpler,” Palihapitiya said. “I think people will trade off incremental taxation for incremental monetizability.”

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