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Australian Banking Association’s cost of living inquiry reveals bank pressure
An analysis of the rising inflation and concurrent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank proved that more than 186 banks in the U.S. are at risk of a similar…
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An analysis of the rising inflation and concurrent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank proved that more than 186 banks in the U.S. are at risk of a similar shutdown if depositors decide to withdraw all funds.
The trade association for the Australian banking industry — the Australian Banking Association (ABA) — launched a cost of living inquiry to closely study the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, global supply chain constraints, geopolitical tensions and more on Australians.
An analysis of the rising inflation and concurrent collapse of three major traditional banks — Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank — recently proved that more than 186 banks in the U.S. are at risk of a similar shutdown if depositors decide to withdraw all funds. The ABA’s inquiry aims to identify ways to ease the cost of living in Australia and the Government’s fiscal policy response.
ABA acknowledged that many Australians would struggle to adjust to a higher cost of living, while it may be easier for some, adding that:
“The ABA notes most customers will manage the higher cost of living and their mortgage commitments by changing their spending patterns, applying their accumulated savings to their higher repayments in anticipation of higher borrowing rates, or refinancing their mortgage.”
One of the most significant pressures for banks was when citizens rolled over from a fixed-rate mortgage to a variable rate. However, ABA urged customers to be proactive and ensure they are getting the best deal for their banking services.
Property rent across Australia has also witnessed a steady increase as markets normalized following the end of COVID-19 restrictions. Citizens experiencing financial difficulty can contact their banks and get help, including fees and charges waivers, emergency credit limit increases and deferral of scheduled loan repayments, to name a few.
Related: National Australia Bank makes first-ever cross-border stablecoin transaction
Alongside this attempt to cushion Australians against rising fiat inflation, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Department of the Treasury have been holding private meetings with executives from Coinbase, with discussions revolving around the future of crypto regulation in Australia.
Consultation open! Today we released the token mapping consultation paper. This consultation is part of a multi step reform agenda to develop an appropriate regulatory setting for the #crypto sector. Read paper & submit views @ https://t.co/4W2msjhP9B @ASIC_Connect @AUSTRAC pic.twitter.com/OGHuZEGvDp
— Australian Treasury (@Treasury_AU) February 2, 2023
Cointelegraph confirmed from an RBA spokesperson that Coinbase met with the RBA’s payments policy and financial stability departments in mid-March “as part of the Bank’s ongoing liaison with industry.”
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China dev fined 3 yr’s salary for VPN use, 10M e-CNY airdrop: Asia Express
Crypto industry concerns after Chinese dev fined 3 year’s salary for using a VPN, largest Ponzi in Hong Kong history, JPEX saga, and more.
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Crypto industry concerns after Chinese dev fined 3 year’s salary for using a VPN, largest Ponzi in Hong Kong history, JPEX saga, and more.
Our weekly roundup of news from East Asia curates the industrys most important developments.
Chinese worker fined $145K over VPN
An unnamed individual in China was fined 1.06 million Yuan ($144,907) for using a virtual private network (VPN) to access restricted websites as part of a remote work routine for a foreign employer.
According to local mediareportsearlier this week, during his employment as a consultant between 2019 to 2022 the unnamed individual accessed GitHub to view source code, answered questions in customer support, held teleconferences via Zoom, and posted multiple threads on Twitter with the help of a VPN.
Based on a document issued by City of Chengde Police, the individual’s income earned with the aid of a VPN was deemed as “proceeds of crime.” The police issued a penalty of $144,097, equivalent to three years of the individual’s salary.
Chinese law prohibits the use of VPNs to bypass the country’s “Great Firewall” that blocks popular sites such as Google, Wikipedia, and Facebook. The ruling has spooked many in China’s IT and Web3 circles, who often rely on VPNs for similar remote-work tasks.
City of Hangzhou airdrops 10M e-CNY
The City of Hangzhou is airdropping 10 million digital yuan central bank digital currency (e-CNY), worth a total of $1.37 million, to incentivize food and beverage spending as it hosts the 19th Asian Games.
Anyone within the municipality of Hangzhou, locals and visitors alike, can receive the e-CNY airdrop for use in food delivery platforms. Individuals can receive up to three vouchers that reimburse merchants, in e-CNY, up to 20% to 30% of the value of food items after purchase.
The airdrop will renew every five days until the balance is emptied. The vouchers, although denominated in e-CNY, are only effective for five days and can only be tendered through select food delivery platforms. Earlier this year, the City of Hangzhou airdropped 4 million e-CNY, worth $590,000, in an effort to boost the CBDC’s adoption.
15 detained over largest alleged Ponzi scheme in Hong Kong’s history
Hong Kong police have detained 15 individuals linked to the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange JPEX.
As of September 27, Hong Kong Policeclaimthey have received over 2,392 complaints claiming a total loss of 1.5 billion Hong Kong dollars ($191.6 million) in the apparent Ponzi scheme. Since the investigation began mid-September, police say that they have seized 8 million HKD ($1 million) in cash and frozen bank accounts worth 77 million HKD ($10 million) suspected of being proceeds of crime.
On September 13, the Hong Kong Securities & Futures Commission (SFC) issued a warning regarding JPEX being an unlicensed exchange within its jurisdiction. The move led to several arrests of its key executives and the abandonment of its corporate booth in Token2049 Singapore. Prior to its collapse, JPEX was one of the most heavily marketed crypto exchanges in Hong Kong, with corporate ads displayed across the city’s metro lines and taxis.
The incident is shaping up as potentially the worst Ponzi scheme in Hong Kong’s history in terms of monetary loss. Shortly after its discovery, the SFC began publishing a list of crypto exchanges awaiting registration or are unlicensed within the special administrative region of China.
CoinEx resilient despite $70M hack
Hong Kong crypto exchange CoinEx will resume services despite falling victim to a $70 million wallet hack orchestrated by North Korea’s infamous Lazarus Group.
According to a September 22 statement, CoinEx claims to have resumed deposits and withdrawals on 190 cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, USD Coin, and Tether. The firm stated:
“The wallet system is operating safely and steadily at present. We will gradually resume deposit and withdrawal services for the remaining 500+ cryptos. Since the resuming operations will be processed frequently, there will be no further or separate announcements for each crypto.”
As part of its new wallet system, CoinEx updated the deposit addresses of all crypto assets, rendering old addresses invalid. On September 12, a leak of the exchange’s hot wallet keys led to the theft of over $70 million worth of users’ cryptos. Despite the incident, CoinEx said that cold wallets were not affected and that the CoinEx User Asset Security Foundation would “bear the financial losses from this incident.”
Multiple blockchain security firms, such as Elliptic, have pointed to North Korea’s Lazarus Group as the perpetrator of the exploit. The CoinEx team has since offered a “generous bounty” for the return of stolen funds. Prior to the hack, the exchange disclosed it had around $260 million worth of major cryptocurrencies in its proof-of-reserves report.
Alibaba moves into digital wallets
Chinese tech conglomerate Alibaba wants to launch its own wallet service.
According to the September 28 announcement, Alibaba’s Cloud subsidiary has partnered with crypto custodian Cobo to create an enterprise wallet-as-a-service solution for developers and organizations, integrating crypto wallets into software through APIs and SDKs. Cobo says it is incorporating its custodial wallet and multi-party computation technology to build the Alibaba Cloud wallet.
“This collaboration marks a significant step towards setting new standards in security, performance, and accessibility of the digital wallet infrastructure for Web3,” said Dr. Changhao Jiang, co-founder and CTO of Cobo. The firm claims to hold partnerships with over 500 institutions, with billions of digital assets in custody through its wallet solutions. In June, crypto-friendly executive Joe Tsaibecame the chairmanof Alibaba Group, replacing his predecessor Daniel Zhang.
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Jim Grant: Fed Policy Is A Ph.D. Standard Of Improvisation
Jim Grant: Fed Policy Is A Ph.D. Standard Of Improvisation
Via SchiffGold.com,
All eyes are on the Federal Reserve, and people are wondering,…
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All eyes are on the Federal Reserve, and people are wondering, what will it do next? The messaging coming from the central bankers is that they will need to keep interest rates higher for longer. But is that possible given the economic conditions and all of the debt in the economy?
Investment and economics writer Jim Grant appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss the Fed’s inflation fight and its impact on the economy. He said we ask too much of the central bankers. After all, they are only human.
Grant opened the interview by taking exception to Chicago Federal Reserve President Austan Goolsbee’s assertion that the current federal funds rate is “restrictive.”
His own Financial Conditions Index, produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, shows, oddly enough, that financial conditions, as defined, are looser than average even after this short of zero to 60 in six seconds of rate increases.”
So yes, monetary policy is “tighter,” but it is not yet “tight.”
Grant has said we are likely entering into a generational bear market in bonds. He pointed out that interest rates are unique because they tend to follow generational cycles. That’s been true in the US since the Civil War.
I say we just ended in 2021 40 years, 4-0 years, of persistently declining rates, which ended, and something I think financial historians are going to puzzle over for many many years, which is negative nominal rates — bonds priced to yields less than nothing to the tune of like $15 or $16 trillion. … It seems to me every big move in financial markets, whether its bonds or anything else, tends to climax in some absurdity, some valuation excess with the stock puppet 1999 or negative nominal yields in 2020-2021.”
Looking back, we had 40 years of declining interest rates. Before that, we had 35 years of generally increasing rates that ended in 1981. Grant said it’s simply a matter of pattern recognition “to give it its intellectual most dignified term.”
This is nothing like a physical law, but this, as I say, has been the form for many, many years in bonds.”
The CNBC host seemed a bit befuddled by Grant’s analysis. After all, if the Fed is controlling rates, why would we see these long trends? If the economy is doing well, the central bankers can raise rates. If the economy suffers, they can lower them.
Grant said “they” don’t always control events.
He quoted former British Prime Minster Harold Macmillan who was asked, “What might go wrong.” He responded, “My boy, events! Events might go wrong.”
We have been used to, I think, imputing to the Fed immense powers of foresight and control. But oftentimes, the Fed, like so many of us, finds itself not in the vanguard of action or thought, but rather running behind to catch up. You know, the Fed can will all it likes to return the 2% world it has defined for itself, but if the past is prologue, the Fed will be evolving a new set of narratives to explain the new world. And I expect that to be coming at Jackson Hole any summer now.”
While it is difficult to see the future, Grant said we can at least observe the present and size up the odds the markets are laying on certain outcomes.
Grant called the Fed members “well-intentioned human beings,” with an emphasis on human beings. He said many scored well on the SAT and they probably would have rather worked at NASA doing physical science as opposed to the “pseudoscience” of economic forecasting.
As recently as the early months of 2022, with inflation percolating above 5%, they were still doing QE. So, we ask too much of them, or indeed, of any set of human beings.”
Would some kind of rule-based system be better?
Grant gave an enthusiastic, yes!
The rule would be that interest rates ought to be discovered in the market rather than imposed or suppressed. We have decided over the course of many years to conduct our monetary affairs by kind of a Ph.D. standard of improvisation. There are no rules, per se. The dollar is uncollateralized as it had been from the beginning of the country to 1971. So, to some extent, we are playing tennis without a net, and without baselines, and without sidelines. So, circumspection in public finance is out the window.”
Demonstrating just how out of whack things have become, Grant pointed out that in private sector terms, the Fed is broke.
So, what about all of the investors and businesspeople who have made bets based on perpetually low interest rates? Grant said he thinks the odds are against them.
Within this long cycle — this projected, imagined long cycle I foresee — there are all sorts of twists and turns. There were in the 70s, for example. Inflation didn’t go straight up. It was in three phases or slices. So, if past is prologue, what we’ll see is a time of long-trending higher rates with head-fakes that will get people convinced that 2% is right around the corner.”
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SEC delays spot Bitcoin ETF decision for BlackRock, Invesco and Bitwise
Invesco, Bitwise and Valkyrie were also hit with delays by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The United States Securities…
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Invesco, Bitwise and Valkyrie were also hit with delays by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission has delayed its decision on several proposals for spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs), including BlackRock, ahead of an anticipated government shutdown.
The spot Bitcoin ETF applications of Invesco, Bitwise and Valkyrie were also delayed by the SEC, according to separate Sept. 28 filings, while Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart is expecting the applications from Fidelity, VanEck and WidsomTree to also be pushed back by the securities regulator.
ANOTHER: @BlackRock joins the party on spot #Bitcoin ETF delays. Three out of seven down. https://t.co/Cn9DSibqf8 pic.twitter.com/eJTzDNInCi
— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) September 28, 2023
Seyffart expected the delays due to a U.S. government “shutdown” potentially taking place on Oct. 1.
Both chambers of Congress — the House and Senate — haven’t agreed on various funding bills to finance government operations, which has put the short-term future of the U.S. government in jeopardy.
Congress needs to pass 12 separate full-year funding bills by Oct. 1 to avoid a shutdown.
The latest delays came two weeks earlier than the scheduled second deadline date for many applicants, many of whom were expecting to hear from the securities regulator by Oct. 16–19.
The SEC delayed a bundle of spot Bitcoin ETF applicants in early September, when the first deadline was approaching.
Meanwhile, the third set of deadlines for the seven firms is around mid-January, and they could also be delayed. The SEC will have to make a final decision by mid-March at the very latest.
Related: Bitcoin ETFs or not, don’t expect a ‘sexy’ crypto bull run — Concordium founder
In late August, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas estimated that the probability of a spot Bitcoin ETF being approved by the end of 2023 had increased to 75% (from an earlier 65%).
He cited the unanimity and decisiveness at which the U.S. Court of Appeals Circuit reached its decision in Grayscale’s court win over the SEC as the main reason behind the odds increasing.
Balchunas further raised those odds to 95% by the end of 2024.
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