If home sellers stop paying real-estate agents’ commissions, buyers may end up footing the bill.
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Unlike what JPMorgan offers with its JPM Coin, the EUR ConVertible will be available for trading, thus opening up immediate access for a wide range of investors.
Societe Generale, the third-largest bank in France is set to launch its EUR CoinVertible stablecoin on the crypto exchange Bitstamp. The move represents a pioneering effort by the Paris-based bank as it will be the first bank to offer a stablecoin on a cryptocurrency exchange.
For what it’s worth, the bank’s groundbreaking action will cause a major shift in the way traditional financial institutions view stablecoins and the crypto space in general. That is not to mention the widespread attention it will also bring to digital tokens that track hard currency values.
Before now, traditional financial institutions have threaded with caution when it comes to crypto. However, according to the Financial Times, which first broke the news, crypto market enthusiasts now have a reason to believe that there is a growing popularity of stablecoins on a global scale.
Societe Generale to List EUR CoinVertible, Hammers on the Need for A Euro-Denominated Stablecoin
Societe Generale is set to do things a little bit differently with its stablecoin, EUR CoinVertible. That is because this is not the first attempt by a traditional financial institution to launch a stablecoin.
However, as earlier mentioned, Societe Generale intends for its stablecoin to be listed on Bitstamp exchange. This means that unlike what JPMorgan offers with its JPM Coin, the EUR ConVertible will be available for trading, thus opening up immediate access for a wide range of investors.
About the decision to introduce the new stablecoin, Jean-Marc Stenger, the CEO of Societe Generale, notes that the crypto space currently has just a few stablecoins. He then added that about 90% of even the few ones available are predominantly backed by US dollars. So, it is only necessary that a stablecoin denominated in euros comes to play a role, Stenger noted.
Controversy, Regulatory Compliance, What Next?
The efforts of Societe Generale, particularly with its stablecoin, have not come without some negative reactions. Some observers have noted something in the smart contract code for Euro CoinVertible. They claim that the smart contract requires that a transaction be authorized by a centralized registrar before being completed. This, according to keen observers, is a way for the bank to control the stablecoin.
Also, there is concern about whether or not Societe Generale has considered the upcoming MiCA regulation. However, the bank also assures that the EUR Coinvertible is designed to align perfectly with the impending rules.
Without a doubt, the landscape of tokenized assets is evolving and beginning to take up a more defined shape. And Societe Generale may just be set to play a huge role in ensuring that happens.
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South Korean Bitcoin (BTC) lender Delio is reportedly preparing for an administrative lawsuit against regulators for the wrong interpretation of the law, leading to an investigation and a hefty fine against the crypto lending firm.
Delio said the allegations of fraud and embezzlement levied by the Financial Service Committee (FSC) are baseless, according to a report published in a local daily. The crypto lender claimed that the regulator implied the law unreasonably in a situation where there were no clear regulations for virtual asset deposit and management products.
The report revealed that the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) recommended the dismissal of Delio CEO Jeong Sang-ho through a sanctions announcement on Sept. 1. Delio claimed that this was a clear indication that the financial authorities were putting pressure on Delio to close down the business rather than giving it a chance to revive. The FIU also imposed a three-month business suspension on Delio and a fine of 1.83 billion Korean won ($1.34 million).
The firm also warned that the assets seized by regulators could put its operations in jeopardy.
Sang-ho said that these FIU sanctions leave a lot of room for unreasonable legal interpretation and arbitrary application, and such behavior by financial authorities could kill the domestic virtual asset industry.
Related: UK banks risk losing licenses for debanking customers over political views
The major issue of conflict remains the interpretation of the existing laws, around whether a lending company that lends cash using virtual assets as collateral is considered a virtual asset business operator and whether the act of imposing a lock-up constitutes “storage” of virtual assets under the Special Financial Services Act.
Delio argued that it is unclear whether virtual asset deposits and management products are considered financial products under the current law. One of the lawyers for the firm noted that there are no provisions for virtual asset-related laws and regulations regarding the virtual asset management business.
The lawyer said that the FIU arbitrarily interpreted virtual asset deposits and management products as financial investment products and sanctioned them, which is the wrong interpretation of the law.
Magazine: Home loans using crypto as collateral: Do the risks outweigh the reward?
Lending protocol Geist Finance is shutting down permanently due to losses from the Multichain exploit, according to a July 14 social media post from the app’s development team. Geist contracts were paused on July 6, then resumed in “withdraw and repay only” mode on July 9. The latest post confirms the team does not plan to reopen lending and borrowing on Geist.
1/2 After confirmation from Multichain that the funds will not be recovered, we are announcing that Geist will not reopen. Because Chainlink oracles are tracking the value of real USDC, USDT, WBTC or ETH, they are not aware of the real value of Multichain assets.
— Geist Finance (@GeistFinance) July 14, 2023
Geist is a lending protocol running on the Fantom network. It had over $29 million worth of crypto assets locked in its contracts before the Multichain hack. Before the hack, Geist allowed users to borrow, lend or use bridged tokens from the Multichain platform as collateral, including bridged versions of USD Coin (USDC), Tether (USDT), Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). It used Chainlink oracles to track the prices of these assets to determine their collateral and loan values.
According to the post, these oracles have stopped producing reliable information. They are now listing the values of the non-bridged, or “real,” versions of each coin, which are more than four times the value of their Multichain derivatives, as the team explained:
“Because Chainlink oracles are tracking the value of real USDC, USDT, WBTC or ETH, they are not aware of the real value of Multichain assets. Those assets are currently trading at around 22% of their real value.”
This makes it “impossible” to reenable lending, as doing so would result in bad debt for holders of non-Multichain coins such as Magic Internet Money (MIM) or Fantom (FTM), the team stated. As a result, Geist will not be able to reopen.
Related: Circle, Tether freezes over $65M in assets transferred from Multichain
The team clarified it is not blaming Chainlink oracles for Geist’s closure, as these oracles “worked as they should.” Instead, “Nobody is to blame except @MultichainOrg here.”
Blockchain analytics experts first reported the Multichain hack on July 7. Over $100 million had been withdrawn from the Ethereum side of Multichain bridges, including those for Dogechain, Fantom and Moonriver. The Multichain team called the transactions “abnormal” and warned users to stop using the protocol. However, the team stopped short of calling it a hack or exploit.
On July 11, on-chain sleuth and Twitter user Spreek reported that an unknown individual was draining funds from the protocol and sending them to fresh wallet addresses using a fee-based exploit.
On July 14, the Multichain team confirmed that the withdrawals from July 7 had been the result of a hack. The network had been storing all shards of its private keys in a “cloud server account” under the sole control of the team’s CEO, who was arrested by Chinese authorities. This cloud server account was later accessed by someone and used to drain funds from the protocol. The team previously stated in the protocol’s documents that no single server had access to all of the shards of a key.
According to the July 14 post, the July 11 fee-based attack was a counter-exploit initiated by the CEO’s sister at the behest of the Multichain team in an attempt to recover funds. The sister was later arrested, and the status of the assets she recovered is “uncertain.”