Monerium

👋 The Monerium EURe is the leading fiat-backed euro stablecoin with >51% of onchain volume in 2024. 💯 And it's fully authorized & regulated! #euro #onchain #fiat #stablecoins Via Arni Gudjonsson & Dune

My last post was two months ago, so it's time for an update. As a founding developer or a developing founder, you always run out of time—either for development or all the other stuff. After two months in coding mode, it’s time to share an update. The articles by Stefan Grasmann, covering his interview with Jón Egilsson from Monerium, the commentary by Dr. Sven Hildebrandt on recent developments at Deutsche Bundesbank, and Jakob Bosshard's post about Janus Henderson Investors exploring on-chain asset management have led me to the conclusion that I should speak up again. Why? Monerium has always been a pioneer in bringing EURO e-money to the blockchain. Monerium was the first to achieve compliance with EU regulations, and they did it well—especially for us developers who need a way to bring cash on-chain. They’ve delivered excellently. If you want to leverage the possibilities of a Turing-complete money execution machine, there is no better way. For non-developers: this is HUGE! Dr. Sven Hildebrandt spoke about Deutsche Bundesbank because the bank is explicitly searching for someone to operate its platform in a private, hybrid public environment. The latter is important. While there are arguments for private blockchains, I believe in public ones. The reason is simple—there were arguments for intranets as well, and while they still exist, it was the internet that made the difference. I believe it will be the same with private vs. public blockchains. We now have a protocol for value transfer. Do we really want to limit it to in-house transactions or just for a set of institutions in Germany? Sure, we can imagine exporting our private tech to the whole world, but let’s be honest—the probability is tiny. Do we really want to be a gated financial community while everyone else plays without us? (Hint: BlackRock deployed their BUIDL fund on the public Ethereum blockchain!) Jakob Bosshard mentioned Janus Henderson Investors, a $360B asset manager, taking its first steps into blockchain by partnering on a tokenized treasury fund, joining industry giants like BlackRock. This is amazing. Every asset manager will move on-chain in the next ten years. That’s my prediction. Why? The technologies mentioned above will streamline the process of setting up funds, monitoring investments, and investing in funds in an unprecedented way. Our proof of concept shows how you can set up a fund infrastructure, including a payment channel and product pipeline, in minutes—obviously without BaFin approval (that takes a bit more time 😉). All transactions are transparent, secure, and verifiable because we use public blockchains. We use Enzyme for the fund infrastructure, Cashlink for issuing eWpG-compliant fund shares, and Monerium for achieving settlement times of 30 seconds. Check out our One-Pager if you want to learn more: https://shorturl.at/uJct6 What is your take on this?

With Forex access, Monerium could revolutionize stablecoin efficiency 👀 But is this ambitious move sustainable in the volatile crypto landscape? "The e-money framework appeared to be the simplest and safest regulatory means," states Sveinn Valfells. All the elements are available in Louis Tellier's article 👇

OpenFi at EthCC: When Bankers Meet Degens The first OpenFi Summit during last week's EthCC in Brussels was a tremendous success, with almost 1,000 participants from banks, card schemes, DeFi protocols and many more. OpenFi unbundles the account from the bank, placing it on-chain via a user-owned smart contract account. This allows seamless integration of existing TradFi services (e.g., bank transfers, debit cards) while also incorporating DeFi services, thanks to fully user owned self-custody wallets. This approach will lead to a Cambrian explosion of innovation, fulfilling the dreams of fintech influencers who envisioned open banking years ago - which however thanks to bank lobbying & their dysfunctional APIs never became reality (PSD2). Read more about OpenFi in Macauley Peterson's article published in Blockworks linked in my answer below. Thank you to all participants of the OpenFi Summit - and especially to the idOS team: You were amazing hosts, Julian Leitloff, Beatriz Alexandre, Lluís Bardet Álvarez and Anna Bikmetova! If you want to participate in our initiative, pls reach out to the "OpenFi Syndicate" ;) Members include: Gnosis Pay, #Zeal , idOS, Monerium and many more!

I'll be speaking at @stable_summit on 6-7 July. See you in Brussels this weekend for a deep dive into all things stablecoin related!

👋 Firstly, we’d like to congratulate Circle on their recent regulatory approval under MiCA. This is a significant milestone for the industry, and one we should acknowledge. ✔ However, Monerium wants to set the record straight about #stablecoins in Europe. Despite some reports, Circle is not the first company to issue regulated stablecoins in Europe or under #MiCA. 💯 In fact, Monerium became the first company to receive a European e-money license for blockchain issuance back in 2019. We've been operating under European e-money regulations since then, paving the way for others, with euros, dollars, and sterling on chain. 💯 MiCA builds on existing e-money regulations, confirming that stablecoin issuers must be regulated as Electronic Money Institutions. This isn't new - it's been the law for over two decades. One of our founders, Jón Egilsson, wrote about this very issue for CoinDesk earlier this year. 👇 As the industry evolves, it is crucial we maintain accuracy in our understanding of regulations. Monerium looks forward to seeing continued progress and adoption of compliant blockchain-based e-money solutions.

📣 MiCA stablecoin law is live, and these are six struggles the industry is facing. After about five years in the making, the EU's tailor-made crypto rulebook's first deadline for stablecoins has arrived. Stablecoin issuers targeting Europe from today need to comply with governance, licencing and liquid reserve requirements. Here are some of the pressure points crypto lawyers, regulatory experts and industry leaders are dealing with as the market begins its transformation. 1️⃣ Tight deadline: The final reports on how to implement these rules were published two weeks before their application is due. This was before the European Banking Authority’s given deadline, but there's no chance that all of the industry will be compliant on Monday. 2️⃣ Delistings: Some exchanges — like Binance, OKX and Bitstamp — are already phasing out non-compliant tokens, most notably Tether's USDt and EURt. This will continue by the time exchanges need to comply with MiCA in December. In the short term, this risks market disruption and liquidity issues. 3️⃣ E-money licence: By defining e-money tokens (stablecoins pegged to a single fiat currency) as electronic money, MiCA drags in another EU regulation. Companies offering e-money tokens will need to be licenced under the Payment Service Directive II, which is tougher and more expensive than a MiCA licence. And for some it is not clear which activities need a e-money licence. It will be assessed on a case-by-case basis, the European Banking Authority told me. 4️⃣ Public blockchains: Platforms interacting with permissionless networks will not be able to comply with requirements under PSD2. These laws were not written for blockchain, self-custody wallets, or cross-chain transactions. DeFi platforms may not be able to custody funds in the way that PSD2 requires them to. 5️⃣ Non-euro stablecoin caps: Issuers of non-euro denominated stablecoins are capped. This may alter market dynamics. Some experts were worried USD-backed stablecoins, which are far more popular, would be driven out of Europe. But the limits only count for, basically, purchasing goods. Many financial activities are exempt from the thresholds, check the article for details. 6️⃣ Reserve requirements: MiCA requires stablecoin issuers to hold 30% of the reserves in cash in multiple EU bank accounts, or 60% for significant e-money tokens. But many banks don’t want to deal with crypto issuers. This provision also takes away from crypto’s original promise of operating independently of the banking system.

*ICYMI* This time last week, we kicked off the summit stage at Money20/20 Europe 2024 with CBDCs: The Future of Digital Money? brilliantly MC'ed by Fabian Astic Here’s what you missed: → Architecting Tomorrow's Money: An Insider’s View with Daniel Eidan, Richard G Brown, and Rita Martins was exactly that. Richard, who's made the earliest reference to the term CBDC, and Daniel, who's at BIS, are literally CBDC architects. Thank you, Rita, for guiding a truly memorable session to kick us off. → The Blueprint to Unlock Global CBDC Adoption where Swift’s Pallavi Thakur and Citi's Ryan Rugg discussed the outcomes of a recent experiment aimed at driving commercial adoption. #casestudy 😎 → The Future of Digital Money: CBDCs or StableCoins was all about the two seemingly unstoppable forces defining the future of money: privately issued or government-backed? And Dr Alisa DiCaprio, Ran (Goldi) Goldshtein, Siân Jones, and Anil Hansjee certainly had thoughts to share! 😉 → Integrating Futures: CBDCs and TradFi in the Next Decade. Former banker, including as COO at bunq, Partior’s CEO Humphrey Valenbreder brought his unique vantage point to a discussion with one of my faves, Rachel Morrissey, about the integration of traditional and digital finance. → The Elephant in the Room: Do CBDCs Solve Real Problems? A former Central Bank governor turned CEO, Jon Helgi Egilsson and the Head of Research at a global T1 bank, Ronit Ghose, walk into a CBDC track...And they pulled no punches. Thank you Nilixa Devlukia for facilitating a truly amazing conversation. #Money2020Eu #CBDC #fintech #crypto #banking #payments

👋 We are at #Money2020EU with #MiCA compliant euros, dollars, and sterling onchain: The Monerium EURe, USD, and GBPe e-money tokens. 👇 Our co-founder & chair Jon Helgi Egilsson took center stage yesterday explaining why retail #CBDC is not needed, in panel with Ronit Ghose and Nilixa Devlukia and as reported by The Fintech Times. 📩 DM for meeting up at Money20/20.

𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗺𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗶𝗻. 𝐈𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗯𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿𝘀! It wasn't the banks that built the best mobile apps for banking. No, it was mobile-first fintechs like Revolut and Nubank (banking) and Robinhood and TradeRepublic (trading). Yes, banking services improved. Yes, they all have mobile apps now. But the winners are the once-new players, now established fintech leaders. I expect the same for crypto-banking and crypto-payment. I don't believe today's major crypto players (Coinbase, Kraken, Binance) will win the race. While they offer a "true crypto experience" with their embedded self-custody wallets, new innovators starting directly with web3 will be the winners of the new wave of innovation in banking. These new services don't integrate a web3 wallet as CeFi (centralized finance) players but start with the web3 wallet at the center, integrating insti-rails (Stablecoin providers like Monerium for money, Visa/Mastercard for payment, ACH/SEPA as banking rails, Fractal ID or others for banking, AFC-compliance services etc). And the exciting part is: for the first time, the account (almost always a Safe Smart Account) belongs to the user. It's no longer the case that if the user switches banks, they lose their account. In the future, the account moves with the user from service to service. At SafeCon on Thursday (23 May), I will discuss this new crypto-banking with Maike Hornung from Visa, Artiona Bogo from Figment, Marcos Nunes from Gnosis Pay and Joao Zecchin from brx finance. SafeCon is Safe's own conference during Berlin Blockchain Week. For more info on SafeCon, see in thread below.