1) UN will use blockchain to manage property ownership in Afghanistan.
On December 2 United Nation announced that a new digital land registry for urban informal settlements at the Ministry of Urban Development and Land in Afghanistan is set to address access to secure land rights, one of the key causes and results of the conflict in the country. Chief of strategic solutions at the U.N. Office of Information and Communications Technology said:
The plug-and-play design of the LTO Network’s blockchain and the contribution of transaction tokens for the Afghanistan project enabled the development of the blockchain anchoring mechanisms and the Open Source certificate of ownership verification tool that is now available to any country to utilize as a blockchain add-on to their existing land registry systems.
2) China Construction Bank’s has a new proof-of-concept for a blockchain-based bond.
China Construction Bank has partnered with a Labuan-based fintech to test blockchain technology for use in the bond market. Bank’s plan is to use the Ethereum blockchain to issue bonds and raise up to $3 billion in total. In an announcement, it was said:
Using […] Trident […] bond templates were mirrored onto smart contracts for rapid deployment, while operational workflows were streamlined to increase efficiency and flexibility in settlement cycles. Together with CCB Labuan, CIMB, and Maybank, the [proof-of-concept] simulated several bond issuances which were all issued and managed on the STACS Blockchain.
3) Pakistan’s citizens want the government to legalize cryptocurrency.
A province in northwestern Pakistan wants the government to legalize cryptocurrency. Zia Ullah Bangash, Advisor to the Chief Minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Science and Technology and Information Technology tweeted:
KP Assembly passes resolution regarding Cryptocurrency and Cryptomining demanding federal govt to take steps to legalize #cryptocurrency and #cryptomining in Pakistan. #DigitalPakistan
4) OMG Network has been acquired by Genesis Block, Hong Kong-based OTC trading firm.
Genesis Block, Hong Kong-headquartered OTC trading firm has acquired OMG Network. Genesis Block believes it has engaged deeply with the DeFi sector this year. It has also been successful in building relationships with leading exchanges Binance and FTX. OMG is a second-layer platform capable of executing roughly 4,000 Ethereum token transfers per second.
5) The Swiss National Bank and the BIS are working on blockchain-powered benefits for the financial system.
The BIS Innovation Hub Swiss Centre (BISIH) announced that it has successfully completed two proofs-of-concept linking existing payment systems to a distributed ledger and settling tokenized assets with a wholesale CBDC. Andréa Maechler talks about how the Swiss central bank doesn’t want to miss opportunities like this
Irrespective of which technologies the financial markets adopt next, the safety and reliability of Swiss financial infrastructure must be preserved. If [distributed ledger technology] can deliver significant improvements in securities trading and settlement, then the SNB will be prepared.