Weekly Blockchain News, August 30, 2021

Welcome back in the weekly summary of leading developments in the crypto/blockchain space, presented from Billon's point of view. Check what happened in the last days when it comes to CBDC and other enterprise uses of blockchain. Enjoy the read!

Drug dealers become millionaires in prison after government hodls seized bitcoin for them. Swedish authorities have to pay three convicted drug dealers nearly $1.5 million after the value of their bitcoins appreciated tenfold during imprisonment. Whoops! 

Ethereum blockchain just split in two.   Nearly half of Ethereum's nodes are running out-of-date software resulting in a hard fork that could cause double spends. Fortunately, this seems to have had little impact so far as most of the miners had already switched to updated versions of Ethereum software.

Thai central bank set to test retail digital currencies in 2022. The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has laid out its plans following a recent study to begin testing a Retail Central Bank Digital Currency (Retail CBDC) in the second quarter of 2022. The pilot will begin with the “Foundation Track” which will test and evaluate the usage of CBDC in conducting cash like activities within a limited scale, such as accepting, converting, or paying for goods and services. BOT will then move on to the “Innovation Track” in order to test and evaluate the ways in which CBDC can be further developed for innovative use cases, by allowing for participation from the private sector and technology developers.

Cuba’s central bank now recognizes cryptocurrencies.  Cuba will now recognize and regulate cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, in a move being billed as historic for the island nation. Resolution 215, which was published Thursday in the state-run Official Gazette, says the central bank will set new rules for how to deal with digital currencies. Commercial providers of related services will now need a license from the central bank to continue operations.

Twelve-year-old boy makes £290,000 from whale NFTs. Benyamin Ahmed from London has made almost GBP 300K during the school holidays, after creating a series of pixelated artworks called Weird Whales and selling non-fungible tokens. The boy has never had a traditional bank account.

PayPal launches its cryptocurrency service in the UK. The company will let British customers buy, hold and sell digital currencies in the f  irst international expansion of PayPal’s crypto product since it launched in the U.S. last year.

And that's it for now. See you next week!