PYMNTS-MonitorEdge-May-2024

Today in Crypto: Anchorage Digital Backs Japanese Stablecoin; Paxos: LatAm Fastest Growing Region in Crypto Interest

Anchorage Digital, a regulated crypto custody platform, will be supporting a Japanese yen stablecoin, a Coindesk report said Tuesday (Sept 13).

This follows its offerings for digital U.S. dollars and euros, and it will help FinTech use cases in Japan, including payments and payroll.

The Anchorage custody of the GYEN stablecoin comes from its partnership with GMO-Z.com Trust Company, which is a subsidiary of Japanese financial services and internet conglomerate GMO Internet Group.

The stablecoin will be 1:1 backed with assets held at FDIC insurance banks and is approved by the New York State Department of Financial Services.

In other news, blockchain infrastructure platform Paxos has published a white paper Tuesday looking into the consumer and market trends of crypto in Latin America, a press release said.

Called “What’s Driving the Immense Growth of Crypto in Latin America?,” it looks into the region’s “robust embrace of cryptocurrency,” particularly after the integration of crypto into apps like Mercado Libre, Nubank and PicPay.

The findings include that Latin America has a big desire for access to the U.S. dollar to help fight inflation, along with a want for easier, cheaper cross-border remittances. And the region wants better access to finances for unbanked or underbanked people.

Meanwhile, the Treasury Department has issued a statement for how Americans can get their cash out of Tornado Cash, a press release said Tuesday.

The Treasury Department said those users can request a specific license from Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to engage in transactions with the virtual currency tied up in Tornado Cash.

They’ll have to provide information including the wallet addresses for remitter and beneficiary, transaction hashes, the date and time of the transactions, and the amounts of cryptocurrency.

Tornado Cash was sanctioned by OFAC earlier this year in order to settle claims that Tornado Cash had helped to launder billions in crypto since it launched in 2019.

Finally, The Linux Foundation, which is a nonprofit working on innovation through open source, will be forming the OpenWallet Foundation (OWF), which will help develop new, more diverse open source software, a press release said Tuesday.

It will work to develop a secure, multipurpose open source engine so anyone can build interoperable wallets. The OWF won’t publish its own wallet, but the wallets it supports will be able to work with identity, payments, digital keys and other uses.

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PYMNTS-MonitorEdge-May-2024