The booming decentralised finance (‘DeFi’) market suffers from an existential problem, says the Bank for International Settlements (BIS): it isn’t decentralised. Meanwhile, the contagion risks from DeFi to the rest […]
The market at the centre of the world’s financial system—repo—is witnessing record popularity. But it’s always prone to collapse, and now cryptocurrencies are joining the fray. The repo market The […]
The incredible boom in fintech and crypto banking is eroding long-standing protections for depositors and creating wider systemic risks. Deposit insurance and depositor preference If you deposit money in a […]
How much bitcoin trading takes place in ‘real money’? Not much. Most is hermetically sealed within the crypto ecosystem. Over two thirds of all bitcoin trading activity takes place in […]
Global financial regulators say the operators of digital tokens pegged to fiat currencies—stablecoins—must follow the stringent rules for other important financial infrastructures, such as payment systems, central securities depositories, securities […]
The public needs protection from the Wild West land grab that’s now going on in money, says Rohan Grey, my guest on the latest episode of the New Money Review […]
The UK’s central bank is preparing for a once-in-a-lifetime reordering of the monetary system as a result of the arrival of new forms of digital money. In a discussion paper […]
Half of the reserves of the unregulated digital dollar, tether, are in the unsecured debt of unknown corporate issuers, according to details of the stablecoin’s reserve backing at the end […]
The biggest crises in financial markets happen when an asset previously assumed to be safe turns out not to be. Investors rush to sell it, they find they can’t get […]
The volume of tethers in issue has doubled since the end of 2020 to over $45bn, despite continuing uncertainty over the largest stablecoin’s asset backing. Tether is a cryptocurrency version […]