Blockchain in financial services: Regulatory landscape and future challenges for its commercial application
Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), including blockchains, are increasingly getting a massive interest from established industries. The interest is especially strong among financial services firms, which are starting to see DLTs as a potential driver of huge savings in infrastructure and back-office processes. Besides, DLTs might become a facilitator for the development of new digital businesses leading to new sources of revenue. However, DLTs are still far from being ready for mass adoption, due to some unsolved challenges on the technological, operational, business and regulatory sides.
As the Use of Virtual Currencies in Taxable Transactions Becomes More Common,Additional Actions Are Needed to Ensure Taxpayer Compliance
This report presents the results of our review to evaluate the Internal Revenue Serviceâs (IRS) strategy for addressing income produced through virtual currencies. This review is included in our Fiscal Year 2016 Annual Audit Plan and addresses the major management challenge of Tax Compliance Initiatives.
The Commonwealth Working Group on Virtual Currencies
This report attempts a systematic analysis of the Commonwealth experience, although owing to the lack of available statistics, it has in many cases only been possible to provide examples. As a result, it is more a review of the most readily discernible trends and behaviours of virtual currencies than a definitive statement on their use within the Commonwealth.
Report on virtual currencies
A paper on virtual currencies in 2016 reported by Jakob von Weizsäcker from the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
Motion For A European Parliament Resolution On Virtual Currencies
Beyond financial services, the Commission is actively reflecting on possible pilot projects to foster decentralised innovation ecosystems and help reshape interactions between consumers, producers, creators and among citizens, businesses and administrations to the end benefit of society.The following report on Virtual Currencies from the European Commission explores DLT benefits and challenges as well as fields for applications in financial services.
Virtual Currencies and Beyond: Initial Considerations
This paper discusses the potential benefits and risks posed by VCs and how financial regulators could approach them. The paper begins by explaining what VCs are, and how they work. It then examines key features and related developments in distributed ledger technologies underlying decentralized VCs, along with their potential use for financial development and financial inclusion. The paper subsequently discusses the policy and regulatory implications of VCs generally and concludes with a brief discussion of areas for future analysis.
Regulatory Treatment of Virtual Currencies under the Tennessee Money Transmitter Act
Virtual currencies, including cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, have raised questions in relation to money transmission and currency exchange. This memorandum outlines the policy of the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions with regard to virtual currencies. It expresses the Department's interpretation of the Tennessee Money Transmitter Act, and the application of its interpretation to various activities involving virtual currencies. This memorandum also seeks to establish the regulatory treatment of virtual currencies under existing statutory definitions.
Regulation Of Virtual Currencies Act – (Draft discussion only)
This initial working draft envisions that any person or entity that operates as a trusted intermediary in the performance of services or offering of products to third parties, whether consumers or not, should be licensed. The range of such intermediaries is large already and likely to expand. For now, the range includes at least the following types of digital currency businesses: digital currency payments intermediaries, digital currency converters and exchanges, providers of web wallet services and products, digital currency gateways, digital cash platforms and digital currency ATMs, and is intended to cover any form of business that handles, stores, maintains, or transfers or engages in the exchange or delivery of digital currency for money or real currency or of one form of digital currency for another, or â like money transmission traditionally â performs functions necessary to move or transfer digital currencies from one person to another or from one location to another even for the same person or beneficiary.
Commonwealth Virtual Working Group Meeting London United Kingdom: 24-26 August 2015
The first meeting of the Commonwealth Working Group on Virtual Currencies took place on 24-26 August 2015 in London, UK.
The Digital Agenda of Virtual Currencies: Can BitCoin Become a Global Currency?
This paper identifies and analyzes BitCoin features which may facilitate Bitcoin to become a global currency, as well as characteristics which may impede the use of BitCoin as a medium of exchange, a unit of account and a store of value, and compares BitCoin with standard currencies with respect to the main functions of money. Among all analyzed BitCoin features, the extreme price volatility stands out most clearly compared to standard currencies. In order to understand the reasons for such extreme price volatility, we attempt to identify drivers of BitCoin price formation and estimate their importance econometrically. We apply time-series analytical mechanisms to daily data for the 2009-2014 period. Our estimation results suggest that BitCoin attractiveness indicators are the strongest drivers of BitCoin price followed by market forces. In contrast, macro-financial developments do not determine BitCoin price in the long-run. Our findings suggest that as long as BitCoin price will be mainly driven by speculative investments, BitCoin will not be able to compete with standard currencies.
Regulation of Virtual Currencies: A Global Overview
This report examines regulations for convertible virtual currencies in 14 countries: Australia; Bangladesh; Bolivia; Canada; China; Ecuador; India; Israel; Japan; Mexico; Russia; South Africa; the United States; and Vietnam.
Virtual currencies: passion,prospects and challenges
The purpose of this Working Paper is to provide a snapshot on virtual currencies. It focuses on convertible, decentralised virtual currencies. Taking Bitcoin as proxy, it reviews its short history and early use cases as means of payment and speculative asset, finding these customer requirements supported by an ever increasing range of service providers, many of which attract venture capital with great ease. Whilst the actual economic footprint of virtual currencies remains very limited, there is a flurry of debates as to the impact a wider adoption could have notably on the economy and on monetary policy, as well as to whether the underlying technology â in essence a distributed, global ledger not requiring the intervention of a trusted third party - couldnât be leveraged more significantly to record transfers of assets other than money.
Public Authorites And The Development Of Virtual Currencies
This is an English summary of the report by Philippe MARINI, president of the committee on finance of the French Senate, and François MARC, rapporteur général, on the development of digitial currencies, published on 4th August 2014.
Information Report On Behalf Of The Committee On Finance On Development Issues With Bitcoin And Other Virtual Currencies
Meeting on 23rd July 2014, under the chairmanship of Mr. Philippe Marini, president, the committee on finance heard a communication by Mr. Philippe Marini and Mr. François Marc, rapporteur général, on the questions raised by the development of the bitcoin and other virtual currencies.
EBA Opinion on âvirtual currenciesâ
The European Banking Authority (EBA) published an Opinion addressed to the EU Council, European Commission and European Parliament setting out the requirements that would be needed to regulate âvirtual currencies'. The report continues by identifying the main risks arising from VCs, separated into risks arising to individuals, to other market participants, to financial integrity, to existing payment systems in conventional FCs, and to regulatory authorities. Each of the 70 risks identified is tentatively prioritised based on indicative judgements of the probability of their materialisation and the impact of this materialisation. The causal divers are also identified for each risk, as these will indicate the regulatory measures that would be required to mitigate the risk drivers.
Virtual Currencies Key Definitions and Potential AML/CFT Risks
The FATF conducted research into the characteristics of virtual currencies to make a preliminary assessment of the ML/TF risk associated with this payment method. An important step in assessing the risks and developing an appropriate response, is to have a clear understanding of the various types of virtual currencies and how they are controlled and used. This report establishes a conceptual framework of key definitions, which could form the basis for further policy development.
