The digital tenge, Kazakhstan’s central bank digital currency (CBDC), has been declared a success after a month-long pilot project. A host of business, regulatory and technical improvements are lined up for it in 2024.

During its pilot run, the digital tenge was used to provide schoolchildren with free lunches in Almaty through the local Onay! card, which was originally designed for use in the transit system. The Kazpost postal system operator served as the intermediary for those transactions.

Plastic cards were issued to members of focus groups by four local banks in conjunction with Visa and Mastercard. The cards allowed users to make purchases in person or online and to withdraw cash…

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The US Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday opted to deny Coinbase’s petition for rulemaking, an outcome industry members find disappointing but not shocking. 

“The denial of Coinbase’s petition for rulemaking was expected by the crypto legal bar and likely Coinbase, as well, given the SEC’s repeated stance that there are already clear rules in place for the industry,” Margaret Rosenfeld, chief legal officer at Cube.Exchange, said. 

Still, the denial sends an inconsistent message to the crypto industry, Mike Selig, counsel in the asset management department at Willkie Farr and Gallagher, said. 

“The SEC rejected the petition stating that it has other regulatory…

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Traditional financial firms are increasingly connecting services, portfolios and operations with digital assets, taking advantage of the crypto winter to build and find a market fit for crypto-related solutions.

Recent examples include Deutsche Bank’s asset management arm, DWS, which announced a new venture with Galaxy Digital and Flow Traders to jointly issue a euro-denominated stablecoin. In another development, oil company Saudi Aramco signed an agreement with financial services firm SBI Holdings about a possible collaboration on digital assets and co-investment in SBI’s digital asset portfolios.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, pension fund M&G has invested $20 million in the…

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Coinbase officially filed a legal challenge to the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s denial of its rulemaking petition from 2022. 

Coinbase Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal posted on X about the filing, saying, “Promise made, promise kept.”

Grewal called the decision “arbitrary and capricious.”

In its petition for review, Coinbase argued that the SEC’s denial is an “abuse of discretion and contrary to law, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.”

“The Commission’s refusal to engage in rulemaking, even while it continues a campaign of regulation by enforcement against Coinbase and others that exceeds its statutory authority, flouts the APA and…

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Solana mobile announced Friday that it had sold out of its Saga phones in the US market.

The sudden burst of demand represents a surprising turnaround from just a few months ago when the startup phone maker slashed prices due to low sales volume.

Virtually all Saga owners will mint the “Saga Genesis NFT” the first time they boot up the phone. That’s because it unlocks half a dozen free rewards, such as a “welcome pack” with $20 in USDC stablecoins.

A dashboard tracking these NFTs from Flipside Crypto shows that since the end of July, only around 300 new Sagas have minted these assets.

That means the flood of new sales is very recent.

As recently as a Dec. 5 interview, Solana…

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The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has held a new round of discussions with asset managers proposing a spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States, this time with officials from Gary Gensler’s office participating in the meetings.

Based on court filings, the regulator received representatives from BlackRock on Dec. 14 to discuss the proposed rule change that would enable the crypto investment vehicle to be traded on major exchanges. According to Bloomberg ETF analyst Jayme Seyffart, this is the third meeting between BlackRock and the SEC to review the application.

Meetings between asset managers and the SEC had intensified over the previous weeks. On Dec….

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A liquidity management network for wholesale payments and tokenized real-world assets took a step forward this week as the use of blockchain tech continues to reverberate around the traditional finance space.  

Financial firms Lloyds Banking Group, Banco Santander and UBS took part in the new payment system, launched by blockchain payments startup Fnality. 

Via the Sterling Fnality Payment System, the live payments took place in a Fnality-held omnibus account within the Bank of England’s real-time gross settlement service (RTGS), Fnality said in a Thursday news release.

The UK central bank said in April 2021 that it would allow RTGS to interface with more payment systems, such as…

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Cryptocurrencies dipped and equities traded sideways Friday after conflicting statements from the Federal Reserve confused traders about what comes next.

New York Federal Reserve President John Williams on Friday presented a different narrative from the one investors ran with on Wednesday. Williams pushed back on the notion that rate cuts are imminent, an expectation the market has been riding since Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s Wednesday press conference. 

“We aren’t really talking about rate cuts right now,” he said during a CNBC interview Friday morning. “It’s just premature to be even thinking about that.”

Read more: Bitcoin has rallied. But where is the price going…

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The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has denied a Coinbase petition for a rulemaking on transactions with cryptocurrencies that are securities. Coinbase filed the petition in July 2022 and pushed steadily for a response.

SEC chair Gary Gensler announced the commission’s decision in a Dec. 15 statement. He gave three reasons for denying Coinbase’s petition, which requested “rules to govern the regulation of securities that are offered and traded via digitally native methods, including potential rules to identify which digital assets are securities.”

Gensler first argued that existing laws and regulations already apply to crypto. His phrasing was… Read more on Cointelegraph