Pantera Capital views on Bitcoin shortage to Wholesale CBDC, Read Today's Top 5 Crypto News

1) Pantera Capital thinks there could be a Bitcoin shortage due to PayPal.

Pantera Capita published a new paper suggesting that PayPal entering the crypto industry has created a shortage of Bitcoin which is also responsible for Bitcoin price rise. The firm also believes

When PayPal went live, volume started exploding. The increase in itBit volume implies that within four weeks of going live, PayPal is already buying almost 70% of the new supply of bitcoins.

2) IMF believes that for issuance of CBDC central banks need reforms.

International Monetary Fund on 20 November 2020 published a paper regarding issuance of CBDC and Central banks need reforms. In the paper IMF highlighted

The absence of an explicit and robust legal basis for the issuance of token-and/or account-based CBDC can be relatively easily remedied through targeted central bank law reform. The issuance of private digital tokens that resemble CBDC could give rise to very much the same problems, including a severely disrupted monetary system, caused in the 19th century by the issuance of banknotes by private banks that subsequently could not honor their obligations to convert those notes in real currency.

3) As Bitcoin is rising, Poloniex went down.

Poloniex exchange due to an unexpected issue went offline. Exchange’s customer support tweeted

Poloniex is currently unavailable due to an unexpected issue, We are investigating the issue and will keep you updated here throughout. Poloniex is now out of maintenance mode, Our spot and margin markets are in post-only mode and withdrawals are temporarily unavailable.

Most probably this could have happened because of an increase in traffic.

4) An arm of the United States Department of the Treasury wants to stop banks from denying services based on sectors.

On Friday Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced a rule-making that would stop banks from denying services to businesses based on sector. Brian Brooks said

There is no place within the United States where crypto is illegal, but there are different licensing requirements for companies involved with businesses so obviously if a bank was banking one of those businesses, one of the things that bank would look at as part of its diligence is whether that exchange or other business had the relevant approvals in that state.

5) Singapore's Central bank focusing on wholesale CBDC.

Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer at Singapore’s central bank and financial regulator said Singapore doesn't need a detailed CBDC as there already exists a system that ensures cheap and fast payment and that they are planning to explore wholesale CBDC which could be used by institutes. In an interview he mentioned

I don’t think we need to do any more experiments on wholesale CBDCs. Now, we should start thinking about going into production.

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