Circle Will Apply for US Crypto Bank Charter in 'Near Future' (bloomberg.com) 17
The crypto payments startup Circle Internet Financial said it's closer to submitting an application to operate as a bank in the U.S., pushing forward with a months-old plan even as regulators make it more difficult for crypto companies to secure this kind of license. From a report: Circle, the issuer of the second-largest stablecoin, disclosed its intention to become a crypto bank in August and has held ongoing discussions with regulators since then, Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Allaire said in an interview. He declined to say when the company would submit the application, saying only that it would be "hopefully in the near future."
The company, which issues USD Coin, is deeply funded. On Tuesday, Circle said it raised $400 million from BlackRock, Fidelity Management and Research and others. The startup plans to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company in a deal valued at $9 billion. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees bank charters, has discussed a variety of topics with Circle management in regards to the company's banking ambitions. Those include interoperability between blockchains and how to assess the operational risks of a specific blockchain, according to Allaire. A representative for the OCC declined to comment on the conversations with Circle. The risk of connecting different blockchains was laid bare recently. Hacks involving crypto bridges totaled more than $1 billion in a little over a year, including a $600 million attack involving the crypto video game Axie Infinity.
The company, which issues USD Coin, is deeply funded. On Tuesday, Circle said it raised $400 million from BlackRock, Fidelity Management and Research and others. The startup plans to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company in a deal valued at $9 billion. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which oversees bank charters, has discussed a variety of topics with Circle management in regards to the company's banking ambitions. Those include interoperability between blockchains and how to assess the operational risks of a specific blockchain, according to Allaire. A representative for the OCC declined to comment on the conversations with Circle. The risk of connecting different blockchains was laid bare recently. Hacks involving crypto bridges totaled more than $1 billion in a little over a year, including a $600 million attack involving the crypto video game Axie Infinity.
Denied. (Score:4, Interesting)
Good luck with that. It's going to be pretty much impossible to keep track of all the lawful requirements as to sources and destinations once even a single crypto currency is involved, let alone multiple.
And if you have your own crypto that's directly connected to a fiat currency, you're at that point exactly like any other bank but with a buzzword attached, and with more non-leveraged risk.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. And then you have to make sure nothing is used for money-laundering, tax-evasion or business with embargoed countries. Basically impossible with crapcoins. Oh, and if you fail, people may become personally criminally liable, i.e. go to prison.
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From what I know of European money laundering regulations they are based on trusted entities and separating clean money from dirty. Basically, every bank should know their own customers and detect possibly criminal money transfers. The bank is responsible for determining if the money is clean or not and must reject the transfer if it cannot confirm or explain the origin. Once a trusted bank says the money is clean, it can be freely used or transfered to other trusted entities without further checks or contr
We need to stop this, like now. (Score:3)
Imagine 2008 but instead of houses the securities trading was done on jpegs of apes.
Worse, this will be used to hide money from the government. I know the libertarian types like that, but you're not gonna like it when there's no money for roads, schools, water treatment, police, etc, etc.
Of course the private militaries used to crack down on said libertarians will still be fully funded.
The trouble with the world today is that everything is so crazy that when you start pointing out problems you sound like a mad man.
It's the whole "big lie" thing but in reverse. The reality of it all is too crazy for most humans to wrap their heads around. We weren't equipped for this level of crazy when we evolved back on the savanna.
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It is not that large. The total BC assets are about 1 Trillion. The US economy is quite a bit larger, as is the EU economy.
Still, this stupidity has to stop, I agree. It will. Just require exchanges to have banking licenses. None of them have a snowball's chance in hell to get one. Caveat: I have a bit of an idea what that implies as one of my current jobs is as IT auditor for regulated businesses.
It's $1 trillion now (Score:2)
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I doubt that. The only money actually in there is money somebody put in. The rest is just hot air.
They have no chance (Score:3)
Applying for a bankling license is easy. Basically no startup has a chance to get it approved, unless they have some experienced banking compliance people on board. None of these people will touch the crap-coin business though as cannot be compliant at this time and probably can never be compliant.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Not really. You see, a bank can never do what the exchanges routinely do currently. So a bank may hold cryptocurrencies for you, but there will never be any mixing and you will always be identified as the owner, possibly in the banking-records if not necessarily on the relevant blockchain. A bank can also not simply buy any crapcoins from any exchange. In fact, I was involved in a project looking at managing crapcoin vallets for banking customers a couple of years ago and they were not sure they could buy c
Fake it till you make it (Score:2)
So which payment co was first - Circle or Square? (Score:2)