Weekly Blockchain News, December 27, 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!

JP Morgan to develop blockchain payment system for Siemens.  Wall Street bank JPMorgan Chase has partnered with German industrial group Siemens to develop a blockchain-based system for payments. The system will be used to automatically transfer money (in U.S. dollars for the time being with euros to be supported next year) between Siemens’ own accounts. The infrastructure uses JPMorgan’s blockchain unit Onyx, of which Siemens is the first major client.

Thai central bank delays CBDC tests to late 2022. Thailand will be slow and prudent in testing the digital currency “as it does not have a problem with fund transfers or payments as some other countries,” Bank of Thailand Deputy Director Kasidit Tansanguan said. The retail CBDC will be tested as an alternative payment method for “cash-like activities within a limited scale,”

Brian Eno is not a fan of NFTs . ‘Right now, I mainly see hustlers looking for suckers,’ says the ambient music pioneer. “NFTs seem to me just a way for artists to get a little piece of the action from global capitalism, our own cute little version of financialization,” Eno told a long-time tech critic Evgeny Morozov. “How sweet — now artists can become little capitalist assholes as well.”

Analysts say 2022 will be ‘defined by agility and cost-efficiency’ instead of ‘blockchain purity’.  The entire crypto market took great strides toward mass adoption in 2021 and now that the year is nearly complete, analysts are setting their price targets for 2022. In addition to BTC price hitting $100,000, analysts expect the crypto market to pivot toward “cost efficiency” and “agility” in 2022.

Terra becomes second largest DeFi protocol, surpassing Binance Smart Chain. On Terra, 13 projects lock over $18.2 billion in value, data from analytics tool DeFi Llama shows. That’s over $1.4 billion per protocol on average compared with an average of $73 million per protocol on BSC, which has $16.5 billion locked on 225 protocols. The figures are a nearly 42,000% increase compared to December 2020, when DeFi projects on Terra held $42 million in value. Ethereum retains the DeFi crown with $152 billion in value locked on 361 protocols.

Gibraltar moves to become the world's first cryptocurrency hub. The Gibraltar Stock Exchange is quietly preparing for a corporate takeover that could have global consequences for this UK territory. Its regulators are reviewing a proposal that would prompt blockchain firm Valereum to buy the exchange in the new year – meaning the British overseas territory could soon host the world’s first integrated bourse, where conventional bonds can be traded alongside major cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and dogecoin.

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