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Shares of miner Applied Digital surged on Nasdaq as the firm announced a second AI cloud hosting deal.

Banning crypto assets may not be an effective approach for countries to manage risk over the long run, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“While a few countries have completely banned crypto assets given their risks, this approach may not be effective in the long run,” the international financial organization said in a post discussing interest in central bank digital currencies in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Instead, the IMF said that “the region should focus on addressing the drivers of crypto demand, including citizens’ unmet digital payment needs, and on improving transparency, by recording crypto asset transactions in national statistics.”

As cryptocurrencies present varying risks in different countries, the IMF said the emphasis should be on mitigating such risks while still “leveraging the potential benefits of the technological innovation associated with crypto assets.”

IMF’s previous position on crypto bans

The position contrasts IMF comments made in a statement in February, relating to an executive board meeting earlier that month where it ​​called for a “coordinated response” over fears crypto could undermine the global monetary system. While directors agreed strict bans on crypto were “not the first-best option,” some directors thought “outright bans should not be ruled out.”

Latin America and the Caribbean are leading the way in the adoption of digital assets, according to IMF research, with Brazil, Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador ranked among the top 20 for global adoption. El Salvador hit the headlines in 2021, giving bitcoin legal tender status. Other countries in the region are making significant progress in introducing CBDCs to enhance financial inclusion or lower cross-border payment costs, the IMF said. 

© 2023 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.

Crypto exchange Coinbase won a reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday, after the high court ruled that a lawsuit filed by one of the exchange’s users couldn’t proceed until Coinbase defends an appeal of a lower court ruling.

The global anti-money laundering watchdog FATF said North Korea is using digital assets to fund weapons of mass destruction

Financial advisors will want a simple story to tell.

The FDIC guarantee included over $3.3 billion the USDC stablecoin issuer held at the lender.

Seraphim Czecker, a DeFi expansionist at Lido Finance, put forth a proposal asking Mantle, a notable Layer 2 project, to allocate 40,000 ether, ($72 million) to Lido’s liquid staking platform.

Mantle, which recently merged with BitDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), maintains one of the largest community treasuries in the crypto ecosystem. This includes $500 million worth of ether (ETH) and $300 million in stablecoins, per data from DeepDAO. Alongside these operations, the project’s core team is concurrently working on the development of an Ethereum Layer 2 network.

Should this proposal receive approval via a governance vote from the Mantle community, it would lead to a substantial allocation in Lido’s staking platform. Furthermore, it would create a strategic partnership between Lido and Mantle.

Aiming to help DeFi ecosystem on Mantle

The proposed allocation of 40,000 ETH from Mantle’s treasury is intended to stimulate liquidity for the stETH ecosystem on Mantle’s Layer 2, it said. Additionally, the proposition aims to attract DeFi integrations, including Uniswap, Curve and other decentralized exchanges to the network.

Czecker, who formerly oversaw risk department at the lending protocol Euler, stated in the proposal, “While the final decision rests with the BitDAO community, I advocate for the relocation of DAO-owned stETH/ETH liquidity into prominent DEXes on Mantle.”

The proposal goes beyond a considerable investment, incorporating a revenue-sharing agreement between BitDAO and Lido DAO. If ratified, this agreement would ensure that a portion of the revenue accrued by the Lido DAO treasury is redistributed to BitDAO over a period of 12 months.

Lido Finance, a frontrunner in decentralized liquid staking protocols, allows users to earn staking rewards from Ethereum and maintain access to their capital via a derivative token of ether known as staked ether (stETH).

© 2023 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.

German software giant SAP is testing Circle’s Ethereum-based USDC stablecoin for clients to tackle difficulties associated with existing cross-border payments.

The company aims to provide a solution to the “hassle” for businesses when sending money overseas by leveraging the U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin and its less-adopted Euro-pegged equivalent EUROC, according to a blog post.

Today’s “cross-border payments are a hassle for many small and mid-sized enterprises with international business partners, expensive – up to $50 per transaction, slow – up to seven days to transmit the money, and non-transparent – you never know the status of the transaction,” said SAP product expert Sissi Ruthe in the post.

“These major challenges can get solved with digital money as a means of settlement and blockchain as the underlying technology,” Ruthe added.

SAP customers can receive the cryptocurrency as “play money” in self-custody wallets — removing the need for intermediaries — to pay a sample invoice in a free test drive of the experiment to “experience how fast, affordable and reliable cross-border payments will look like.” However, the funds cannot be used in the real world as it runs on a test network rather than the main Ethereum blockchain and will not involve real tokens.

Circle is the second-largest stablecoin behind Tether’s USDT, with a market cap of $28.3 billion, according to CoinGecko.

Last week, Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle, urged lawmakers to defend the U.S. Dollar’s primacy and pass stablecoin legislation.

© 2023 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.

Bitcoin Cash (BCH) has surged by 36.5% in the past three-days after EDX, the exchange backed by Fidelity, Schwab and Citadel, listed it alongside bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH) and litecoin (LTC).

The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for June 23, 2023. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.