Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ – the banking arm of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group’s (MUFG) is said to be reportedly working on an in-house digital currency and will be conducting its first large-scale in early 2019 next year. Being the largest operational bank in Japan, MUFG will be the first-of-its-kind financial institution to have its own digital currency to be used across 100,000 MUFG retail bank customers, says local Japanese publication .
The MUFG Coin will be tied up to the Japanese Yen in 1:1 conversion ratio. Account holders of the bank will have to apply to take part in the trial process which will allow them to download a smartphone app and covert their fiat yen bank deposits into their ‘MUFG Coin’ holdings.
The report further goes to note that ‘They will be able to use the currency to make payments at places like restaurants, convenience stores, and other shops. They can also transfer the currency to the accounts of other participants.’
Before shifting to deploying this facility os such a huge customer base, the bank will perform initial trials among the in-house employees for over a year where they will be assessing whether the settlements and other peer-to-peer transfers done using the app are efficient and secure.
Another advantage that MUFG coins will bring to its users is the low commission fees for payments including international transactions, in comparison to the existing prepaid electronic money platforms. In a push towards expanding its global reach, the bank will also encourage users to exchange MUFG Coins with foreign currencies at the airport at low commission rates. An excerpt from the report reads: “If MUFG coin is used for overseas remittances, it is estimated that the commission will be cut to less than one-tenth of that of the current cost of several thousand yen per (international) transaction.”
Additionally, the bank is also said to be working on a two-way ATM that will allow the users to ‘withdraw’ coins on their smartphone or even exchange them into fiat yen. MUFG president Nobuyuki Hirano previously said that having an in-house digital currency in the form of MUFG Coins is an inevitability would “overcome issues of [existing] virtual currencies” like volatility “[to] create a highly useful currency”.
Moreover, according to the latest arriving today, May 22nd, the MUFG Bank achieved yet another milestone wherein its Thailand-based subsidiary could successfully send money in just a few seconds to the Standard Chartered account of a Singapore-based Mitsubishi Group Subsidiary, using Thai bank Krungsri’s (Bank of Ayudhya) Blockchain Interledger.
While commenting after the successful completion of this pilot, Thakorn Piyapan, head of the Krungsri Consumer Group and the Digital Banking and Innovation Division, said that the “technology-based transaction helps enhance their subsidiaries’ financial liquidity toward greater flexibility and efficiency.”
The MUFG Bank is also said to have tied-up with major U.S.-based cloud delivery platform Akamai Technologies for the release of a blockchain-based global payment network.
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Those who try to stay tuned with the news from the crypto sphere definitely know that bitcoin had some really crazy moments in its history. A number of them will stay forever in archived internet chat forums. There are also a lot of mysteries in its history, like the real name of its creator widely known as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Today, May 22 is another symbolic day in bitcoin’s mythology. This day is now called bitcoin Pizza Day. Eight years ago, on May 22, programmer Laszlo Hanyecz decided to buy some pizza. So, to get two Papa John’s pizzas he paid another bitcoin talk forum user just 10,000 BTC. At that time, it was only $25 which was quite a good price for those pizzas.
But in 2018 the situation is totally different. That 10,000 BTC is worth $82,078,100 (-3.33% from yesterday as it is informed by at press time) . Now it sounds really ridiculous, that’s why there is no surprise that such a deal turned into one of the strongest memes of the cryptocurrency world.
The pizza is worth $83,131,600 today. (-2% from yesterday) Today is bitcoin pizza day!
— bitcoin Pizza 
(@bitcoin_pizza)
Just a year ago, when the crypto community was celebrating bitcoin Pizza Day, the amount of 10,000 BTC was worth over $21 million. And already at that time it seemed to be unbelievable.
Laszlo Hanyecz is now a well-known person in the crypto community. Giving an interview last year he explained the events of 2010 the following way: “It wasn’t like bitcoins had any value back then, so the idea of trading them for a pizza was incredibly cool. No one knew it was going to get so big.”
And in general, such his position is quite understandable. Even the creators of bitcoin were not confident about the future of this cryptocurrency. It was believed that bitcoin would either have an enormous value, or it would be worth nothing at all.
Today, it is possible to purchase practically anything you want with bitcoin, though it may take some time to find a necessary app to do it and to wait for a confirmation of your transaction.
Of course, it is also possible to buy pizza, but it is difficult to believe that today someone may want to purchase it paying an amount that could be enough to fuel between two and four ICO projects.
But if you think that this legendary purchase in 2010 is the only interesting thing about Hanyecz, it is not so. This year, he has made once again: he has bought pizza through the Lightning Network that is a second layer protocol developed atop the bitcoin’s blockchain network.
On February 25, Hanyecz announced that he had purchased pizza having made a payment using the Lightning Network. This time he paid only 649000 satoshis, or 0.00649 bitcoins which means that he paid nearly $62 for both pizzas.
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Forty regulators in the US and Canada are reportedly collaborating in the largest coordinated crackdown on cryptocurrency scams to date by state and provincial officials. The operation has triggered over 70 investigations so far, with 35 cases completed or pending.
Also read:
Mass Crackdown
The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) said Monday that US and Canadian securities regulators have launched nationwide investigations on suspicious cryptocurrency investment schemes, the Washington Post reported. This is “the largest coordinated crackdown to date by state and provincial officials on bitcoin scams,” the news outlet wrote. CNBC elaborated:
More than 40 state and provincial watchdogs are participating in ‘Operation Crypto-Sweep,’ which has triggered at least 70 investigations so far.
NASAA is a voluntary association whose members are securities administrators from states, provinces, and territories in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Canada, and Mexico. According to its website, the association is the oldest international organization devoted to investor protection.
The association, which helps coordinate Operation Crypto-Sweep, confirmed that “as many as 70 investigations have been opened in the sweep, with more expected in the coming weeks.” Furthermore, the Washington Post detailed, “As many as 35 cases are pending or already completed, with some resulting in cease-and-desist letters warning the alleged schemes that their unregistered activity violates state securities law.”
The efforts focus on “unregistered securities offerings that promise lucrative returns without adequately informing investors of the risks” as well as initial coin offerings (ICOs), the regulators explained.
Fighting Fraud
By posing as members of the public, the NASAA task force found roughly 30,000 crypto-related domain name registrations, the news outlet described, adding that “Many of the alleged scams use fake addresses, slick marketing materials and promises of over 4 percent daily interest,” the news outlet described. “A few have even used unauthorized photos of high-profile individuals, such as Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to portray themselves as aboveboard.”
The director of enforcement at the Texas State Securities Board, Joseph Rotunda, was quoted saying, “Although the international task force’s work is far from complete, my suspicions have already been confirmed: The market for cryptocurrency investments is saturated with fraud, and our work is only revealing the tip of the iceberg.”
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a study showing that out of 1,470 ICOs, 271 were found to contain “red flags that include plagiarized investor documents, promises of guaranteed returns and missing or fake executive teams.” Investors have poured more than $1 billion into these 271 ICOs, the publication added. In addition, a Chinese government-backed industry organization also its fake crypto analysis last week, claiming that its monitoring system has detected 421 fake cryptocurrencies.
Massachusetts’ Secretary of the Commonwealth, William Francis Galvin, emphasized on Monday:
Not every ICO or cryptocurrency-related investment is fraudulent, but we urge investors to approach any initial coin offering or cryptocurrency-related investment product with extreme caution.
NASAA president and the director of the Alabama Securities Commission, Joseph Borg, explained that “consumers face higher risks of being misled at a time when the intense demand for bitcoin has prompted many retail investors to take extreme steps to gain exposure to the currency, such as taking out a bigger mortgage.”
What do you think of Operation Crypto-Sweep? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock and NASAA.
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