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Three Chinese internet giants are reportedly participating in the country’s second city-wide test for digital Renminbi – known as DC/EP.

Local business media CLS reported on Friday that Chinese ride-hailing giant DiDi, Tencent-backed food delivery app Meituan and video streaming platform Bilibili are also supporting the $3 million digital yuan test in the city of Suzhou.

The report said lottery-winners in Suzhou can spend their free digital yuan on DiDi’s ride-hailing service or Meituan’s bike-sharing service if they choose to activate their DC/EP wallets with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.

If they activate their DC/EP wallets with Bank of China, they can spend the money on Bilibili, which is best known for offering premium animation video content to subscribers. 

The city government of Suzhou announced last week it is distributing 20 million yuan, or $3 million, in the form of digital Renminbi to local residents via a lottery.

The test, in an effort to boost domestic consumption during the annual Double 12 online shopping festival, is in a much larger scale than the first one conducted in Shenzhen in October.

That said, the participation from DiDi, Meituan and Bilibili in the Suzhou test isn’t surprising.

It was reported in July that these three companies have either inked partnership or held discussions with the People’s Bank of China to take part in DC/EP’s development.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

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If a new speech is any indication, SEC commissioner Hester Peirce believes crypto is a battleground for the conversation surrounding government power and personal liberty.

In a speech today to the Federalist Society, Peirce — a dissenting voice against the SEC’s past rejections of proposed bitcoin exchange-traded funds — said crypto poses new challenges to regulators, but that agencies “should figure out a way to embrace the personal liberty principles undergirding it.”

Peirce cautioned against an excess of central planning, which she said is making a comeback through federal climate change efforts. Crypto’s acts as opposition to central planning, according to Peirce.

For that reason, she said regulators must wrestle with the growing myriad of problems that the crypto space — and especially decentralized finance or DeFi — creates for enforcement, rather than curb its potential with undue regulation.

“If we were instead to steamroll the technology’s liberty-enhancing features under the weight of regulation, we would lose a lot of the power of the new technology to afford opportunities to people whose autonomy has previously been curbed by, for example, limited access to the traditional financial system, geographic location, social standing, or subjection to a repressive government,” said Peirce.

With her growing concerns of personal liberty as it relates to financial regulation, Peirce quipped that her affinity for the Consolidated Audit Trail — a reporting utility that would enable the SEC to track orders and broker activity through the trade cycle with greater transparency — might earn her a new nickname. 

“I have spoken so often of my concerns about the CAT that I dread seeing my moniker change from CryptoMom to CATLady,” she said. “The liberty implications of this proposal, however, warrant continued mention.”

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Bitwise’s crypto index fund has done more volume than Grayscale’s record-breaking Ethereum product on its second day live, according to market data.

Thursday’s trading day volume reached $33,162,394, eclipsing Grayscale’s ETHE by more than $2 million.

Source: OTCMarkets.com

Bitwise began listing shares of its index fund on over-the-counter markets on Wednesday. This moved enabled trading without brokerage accounts when previously, the Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund could only be accessed through private placements at net asset value. 

Now the index fund joined the likes of Grayscale’s offerings by making the shares publicly available for trading. Grayscale’s crypto products, the Bitcoin-based GBTC and Ethereum-based ETHE, have continuously broken their previous milestones, and at times trading at tremendous premiums relative to net asset value. Bitwise’s BITW gives investors access to the ten largest crypto assets as opposed to Grayscale’s offerings, which hone in on specific digital assets. 

GBTC remains top of the charts by a wide margin, with $242,467,110 in volume during today’s trading hours on OTCQX. 

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

A new platform aiming to cut down the steps to enter the decentralized finance (DeFi) world has raised $4.9 million in funding. YIELD allows users to invest in digital assets, smart contracts and protocols through one app.

Private investors funded $3.4 million, with Alphabit Fund, Digital Strategies and Yeoman’s Capital contributing, among others. The remaining $1.5 million came from a token event with TrustSwap that garnered $1.2 million in 12 hours and a crowdfunding equity event with BnkToTheFuture that brought in just under $300,000.

BnkToTheFuture has enabled funding rounds from the likes of BitFinex, Kraken and Wirex. CEO Simon Dixon said the investment platform has been getting lots of requests for opportunities to invest in DeFi projects. 

“We were trying to find one that actually has a well-structured company behind it; this is how we came across YIELD,” he said in the announcement.

YIELD has a restricted banking license and trust management license from Mwali, according to the project team.

© 2020 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.