Binance Launches Crypto Donation Drive For Notre Dame Tragedy

As a response to what it describes as a great moment of loss for culture, arts, and history Major Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has launched a crypto donation program which is aimed to gather funds to help the reconstruction of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Binance’s donation program is called Rebuild Notre-Dame is calling on the crypto community to support their campaign to restore the medieval cathedral that was heavily damage from a major fire that nearly destroyed the famous church.

It has created a new crypto-fundraising channel on its charity platform that was initiated by the company’s social project The Blockchain Charity Foundation (BCF).

As it stands the campaign has already received 28 donations in Bitcoins (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Binance’s internal token Binance coin (BNB) which is worth $7,577 USD at the time of this writing.

Binance is not the only cryptocurrency related business that has started a campaign to help the reconstruction of the famous landmark; this includes Cointelegraph which launched cryptocurrency donations for the Notre Dame Cathedral reconstruction.

IMF and World Bank Lookin Into Central Bank Digital Currencies

It has been reported that Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) has been a central topic of discussion when global leaders met for this year’s World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (IMF) join Spring Meetings in the United States.

CBDCs have been a hot topic during the meeting that was held in Washington D.C. from April 8-12.

The managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has in the past has urged central banks to consider issuing digital currency to make transactions more secure and could satisfy public policy goals of financial inclusion, consumer protection, privacy and fraud prevention.

CBDCs are mostly proof of concept for many central banks in the world some have already predicting to issue one in the next decade following the trend on how money is used in their country.

Countries like Sweden and Pakistan are already mulling over plans to issue central bank-backed digital assets with the former in response to the declining usage of fiat in the country and the latter to increase efficiently and cost effectiveness through the digitization of the government.

Chinese Loves Blockchain But Hates Crypto

It is not secret that there is no other government in the world trying harder to destroy cryptocurrency, first restricting ICOs, not allowing cryptocurrencies to be operated in its mainland and now trying to make crypto currency mining illegal.

While it might have some temporal effect on cryptocurrencies at large especially on the number 1 cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, it has not stop the space in moving forward as more and more governments, private enterprises and individual are getting into the nascent industry.

In fact the Executive Chairman of Blockchain Research Institute, Donald Tapscott suggested that it is only a matter of time before renminbi makes its way into blockchain and perhaps 20 years down the road people will still be using renminbi albeit in its digital form.

He also explains that there is a dichotomy in China which one part of China is embracing and even phrasing blockchain technology as one of the most important technology in the future of China while shunning cryptocurrencies, the first real world use case that leveraged the technology.

Surprising as it is the reaction of the government of China, particularly its Central Bank is quite natural reaction since the technology threatens to disrupt its very purpose of existence.

Poloniex Adding Support For The Tron-Based USDT

It has been reported that Poloniex, one of United States Major cryptocurrency exchanges, will be adding support to the recently launched Tron-based USDT (Tether).

The exchange has reportedly enabled deposits and withdrawals for the new Tether version and has expressed plans on concurrently supporting two types of Tether, one supporting Omni-based Tether the other Tron-based tether.

To be able to do this it was reported that a portion of the Omni Tether will be converted into Tether on the Tron blockchain which is will expand the flexibility of the exchange as well as the options available for its customers.

In addition to this initiative Poloniex is planning to conduct to airdrop Tether to qualified holders of the said digital assets which is relative to the amount of Tether they currently hold.

According to new reports online Tether started issuing USDT on the TRON (TRX) blockchain on April 17, 2019 which enables users to hold and transfer the cryptocurrency through the smart contract on Tron.

Bakkt Considering To Get BitLicense

According to sources close to the matter, Bakkt, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) backed cryptocurrency exchange is seriously considering applying for a BitLicense to help ease the concerns of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Bakkt is a highly regulated Bitcoin ecosystem which has been touted to be the first one to bring physically delivered Bitcoin futures, the first of its kind in a regulated environment.

However the project has seen several delays due to regulatory concerns particularly by the CFTC which has remained skeptical about the project due to the way how client’s tokens will be stored and protected from theft and manipulation.

To help ease these concerns it was revealed that ICE is considering applying for a license from New York Financial regulators which will allow Bakkt to hold custody of customer’s tokens.

While it remains to be seen if the BitLicense will finally convince CFTC to allow the Futures Contract Bakkt has been busy acquiring other companies and acquiring licenses and capabilities that is seen to bolster its products offering.

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