The CoinGeek Pulse Episode 46: China mining crackdown, US sharpens CBDC focus, Domineum teams up with nChain

China is cracking down their digital currency market, forcing mining companies in the country to make drastic changes in their operations.

Authorities in China are reportedly putting pressure on the country’s payment and financial companies to restrict digital currency-related transactions. Last week, three of China’s major trade associations released coordinated warnings against mining and digital currency trading.

This led to several BTC miners deciding to cease operations in China this past week amid reports that authorities are planning a crackdown on digital currency mining. Three BTC mining pools, including BTC.TOP, had announced plans to halt activities. In Mongolia, considered to be the center of BTC mining, telephone hotlines were even set up to encourage citizens to report illegal mining activities.

It is not the first time for the economic superpower to impose a crackdown, yet the announcements continue to disrupt businesses and affect the digital currency space globally. Many mining firms are now looking into moving their operations overseas, especially to North America. This is another opportunity for the region to assess their current regulatory rules and policies that concern this industry.

Speaking of North America, Federal Reserve’s Lael Brainard has urged the United States to sharpen the focus on central bank digital currency (CBDC) development to maintain the U.S. dollar’s role as a global reserve currency.

In a recent webcast, Governor Brainard discussed the growing role of digital private money, the migration to digital payments and plans for the use of foreign CBDCs in cross-border payments.

Brainard emphasized concerns about financial exclusion, in which she explained that it took “weeks” for prepaid debit cards to be distributed as relief to households that did not have up-to-date bank information filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). She said the COVID-19 pandemic had “accelerated the migration to digital payments” among U.S. households.

Last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the firm would be publishing a discussion paper in the next few months that would focus on the possible creation of CDBC.

Meanwhile, Domineum, a London-based software development firm, announced this week that it has entered into a partnership with nChain and BSV blockchain.

Domineum provides a range of enterprise and government data applications across several sectors, with a particular focus on emerging and developing markets in Africa.

The companies will work together to identify further commercial opportunities to migrate Domineum’s current data solutions to become ‘Blockchain-as-a-Service’ products built on BSV.

BSV is an enterprise-grade public blockchain, functioning as both a peer-to-peer electronic cash system and a global data ledger for government and enterprise applications.

In other news, the first RUN hackathon will take place on June 4-6 online. This will be the first crowdfunded hackathon within the BSV ecosystem. Its current prize pool now stands at nearly 130 BSV.

Submission instructions as well as a Learn section for the RUN2K21 Hackathon are updated on the site!https://t.co/eC7zuzK7d9

The total prize pot continues to grow, is now over 127 $BSV! pic.twitter.com/0YHexzBicZ

— runonbitcoin (@runonbitcoin) May 27, 2021

To learn more about central bank digital currencies and some of the design decisions that need to be considered when creating and launching it, read nChain’s CBDC playbook.