WATCHDOG ACTION: Germany’s Financial Supervisory Authority said Monday it had issued a cease-and-desist order against Karatbit Foundation – issuer of a purportedly gold-backed cryptocurrency called KaratGold Coin – on Oct. 21 for releasing the token without a license in the country. South Africa’s financial watchdog also warned consumers to avoid investments offered by the firm. Full story
MILITARY LINK: Hyperledger, the open-source blockchain alliance backed by the Linux Foundation, has green-lit a Beijing-based firm that serves the Chinese army to join its new certification program. Full story
AGGREGATOR THREAT? Visa's research wing published a paper describing a blockchain. LucidiTEE would allow banks and fintech applications to share data without relying on intermediary data aggregators – potentially posing a threat to the business models of firms like Plaid, Envestnet, and Finicity. Full story
LIBRA LESSONS: Bitspark is one of a few operational token projects that launched with the same intent as Facebook's Libra: to offer financial services to the unbanked. Here is how it has fared since a 2017 ICO. Full story
FRIENDLY OPTION: U.K.-based Cashaa will offer bank accounts for stateside crypto firms – unlike many of its mainstream competitors. Account applications open Nov. 25, with Cashaa saying they offer full banking features with access to SWIFT and ACH globally. Full story
LET'S TALK BITCOIN! This week marks the debut of the CoinDesk Podcast Network. Every Sunday, hosts of the Let's Talk Bitcoin! show will catch up on the biggest news of the week and hash out potential solutions crypto's unending debates. Listen here
ELECTRONIC EURO: A former Deutsche Bank economist has proposed a stablecoin solution to Europe’s economic woes. In a Financial Times op-ed, Thomas Mayer argues the Euro is strained by the diverging economies that comprise the eurozone. Instead of heading into a collapse, financial authorities could pivot towards a digitized euro backed by government bonds. This stablecoin “would not only be stronger but could compete... to become a global reserve currency,” Mayer said.
Karatbar continued