On Oct. 18, during a public discussion on the Filo News channel, Argentina Central Bank director Juan Agustín D’Attellis Noguera revealed that the central bank is working on the legislative framework for the digital peso CBDC project recently proposed by the Minister of Economy and presidential candidate Sergio Massa. Continue Reading on Cointelegraph More
Tether, which is based in the British Virgin Islands, paid over $40 million in 2021 to settle allegations related to its collateral pile. The company had around 60 employees overseeing USDT as of May and plans to expand its team to 90 by the end of 2023. Its assets are primarily composed of short-dated US Treasury bills, and it works with banking partners such as Cantor Fitzgerald, Deltec Bank & Trust Ltd., Britannia Bank & Trust, and Capital Union Bank.In his new role, Ardoino plans to publish real-time data on Tether’s reserves and expand tech investments, regulatory liaisons, and renewable energy ventures. He will also continue his work as CTO at Bitfinex, Tether’s sister cryptocurrency exchange, where he will focus on its matching engine. Giancarlo Devasini serves as CFO for both companies.Regulatory challenges are on the horizon for Tether as authorities plan stricter rules on stablecoin issuers. Regulations from the European Union (EU), set to come into effect in June 2024, will require operators to disclose their corporate governance plans, shareholders, and risk management practices.Industry consultant Austin Campbell highlighted the pressure on Ardoino to deliver a full financial audit of Tether’s books in 2022. Campbell also pointed out potential difficulties arising from US legislation on stablecoins.Ardoino, who is based in Lugano, Switzerland, is preparing for these challenges and is also gearing up for Tether’s annual Bitcoin-themed conference and summer school in the city.This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C. More
On Thursday, October 19, 2023, Ripple won a key legal battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over alleged securities law violations. This string of successful legal battles has allowed XRP Coin to reach its $0.52 limit.Meanwhile, LBRY, the creator of Odysee, announced its closure due to debts to various parties including the SEC. Despite a penalty reduction to $130K, LBRY decided against appealing. The closure of LBRY, which had a market cap of $5.5 million, sparked criticism from crypto influencers Ashley Prosper and Slorg, as well as Pro-XRP lawyer John Deaton. They criticized the SEC’s heavy-handed approach towards smaller entities like LBRY while failing to prevent larger failures like FTX.Fox News journalist Eleanor Terrett noted that despite Ripple’s victory and a market cap of $27 billion, its litigation isn’t over due to its $700M+ institutional sales and pending Section 5 violations. The SEC has requested a schedule for further litigation until November 9, 2023.Garlinghouse and Larsen openly criticized the SEC for what they perceived as political motives behind their charges. However, Ripple’s successful legal journey continues to impact its business positively and enabled XRP Coin to hit its price limit.This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C. More
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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Washington’s tightened export controls on chips may leave Chinese tech groups relying on outdated and stockpiled chips to pursue their artificial intelligence ambitions, with industry giants Alibaba and Baidu facing new hurdles for the manufacturing of their latest self-designed AI processors.Alibaba and Baidu’s processors have become frontrunners in China’s efforts to create domestic alternatives to US maker Nvidia’s sophisticated products, with the chips at present manufactured at TSMC and Samsung plants, said four people close to the groups’ design projects.The processing speeds of their most advanced AI chips fall within new thresholds unveiled by Washington this week as part of an update to its chip export controls, the people said, putting their partners in contravention of the rules if they manufacture them for Chinese clients.The tightening will also force Silicon Valley-based Nvidia to halt shipments to China of two processors that the company had tailor-made to comply with earlier export controls, according to a statement from Nvidia this week.Collectively, the restrictions mean Chinese tech groups will have to turn to AI chipsets similar to Nvidia’s V100, which was released in 2017 and has since been discontinued, in order to train and run generative AI models, analysts said. Since the V100 was released, chips have become significantly more advanced, enabling the creation of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.The US move poses “an existential challenge” to China’s efforts to catch up with AI development at OpenAI and other American companies, said one chip consultant in Beijing.Washington’s controls, which extend to foundries in Taiwan and South Korea contracted to make chips for Chinese groups, are made possible by the vast amount of American hardware and software embedded in the semiconductor supply chain. China’s domestic alternatives, including partially state-owned SMIC, are several generations behind in chip manufacturing technology.The updated rules come at a time of deteriorating US-China relations and an expanding programme to impede Beijing’s technological progress. “The goal is to choke off China’s access to the future of AI,” said Gregory Allen, an AI expert at the CSIS think-tank.Allen said the updated controls increased the number of advanced AI chips requiring a licence that was likely to be denied, in effect banning them for export. The controls also create a reporting regime that covers a huge swath of data centre chips with speeds just below the cutting edge and add prohibitions on selling to subsidiaries of Chinese companies outside the country.“The Department of Commerce’s visibility into high-performance computing chip exports worldwide is going to go way up,” Allen said.While China’s largest tech groups have stockpiles of AI chips, the controls will eventually make training AI models in the country more expensive and time-consuming than for their US counterparts, analysts said. Bernstein senior analyst Boris Van estimated that relying on chips similar to Nvidia’s V100 would at least double data processing costs.“Once the existing stash of chips is exhausted, Chinese AI firms would struggle to improve their models,” said Phelix Lee, an analyst at Morningstar.Big Chinese tech groups, including Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance and Tencent, have purchased more than $5bn worth of Nvidia chips in recent months, the Financial Times reported in August, but most of these orders have not been delivered, according to several people familiar with the situation.“The supply is terrible,” said a Beijing-based AI entrepreneur desperate for Nvidia’s processors, noting that the company was months behind in deliveries. Washington has given Nvidia and other chip companies a grace period of about one month to fulfil orders to China.“Whatever portion cannot be fulfilled in the grace period will have to be cancelled,” said Charlie Chai, a Shanghai-based analyst at 86Research.While industry insiders expect some banned chips to continue to flow into the country through black market channels, they do not expect supply to fulfil the high demand from tech groups training generative AI models.“China will be permanently stuck with low-end Nvidia chips and see the [AI] infrastructure gap gradually widen with the rest of the world,” said Chai of 86Research.Samsung declined to comment. TSMC, Alibaba and Baidu did not respond to requests for comment.Video: The race for semiconductor supremacy | FT Film More
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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The once-sleepy fishing town of Chancay, 80km north of Lima, used to be best known as a weekend getaway for residents of the capital. But, today, the beachfront is a sprawling construction site, with cranes shifting pillars as dumper trucks rumble around below.The town is about to become host to one of the largest deepwater ports in Latin America. Construction and operation will be carried out entirely by private companies — something officials say could be a model for other infrastructure works in Peru.The project is so huge it has the potential to upend maritime traffic all along the Pacific coast of South America, displacing it from Chile, Ecuador and Colombia. In its initial phase, the port is expected to handle 1mn containers and 6mn tonnes of loose cargo a year.Cosco Shipping, a Chinese state-backed shipping and logistics company, has a 60 per cent stake in the port, with the remainder in the hands of Volcan, a Peruvian mining company. Of the $3.6bn cost of construction, $1.3bn has already been invested in the initial phase, according to Cosco.“The intention of the port is to pull South American countries towards Peru as a focal point [for trade to Asia], taking advantage of our strategic location,” says Gonzálo Ríos Polastri, deputy general manager of Cosco Shipping Ports Chancay Peru and a former admiral. “It will be an engine for development across several industries.”The port will sit on a 280-hectare site. The wave breakers alone used enough concrete to construct 20 buildings of 10 storeys and will protect 1.5km of dock space, capable of berthing some of the world’s largest cargo ships.A 1.8km tunnel bored beneath Chancay — at some points 900m deep — will connect the pier to a logistics centre and the pan-American highway without disrupting traffic in the town.Cargo will be able to reach China from Peru in 10 days, rather than 45 at present. And Brazil is also expected to be a beneficiary of the port, which will provide quicker access to Asian markets for the country’s exports. Brazil and Peru are connected by the Southern Interoceanic Highway, which passes through the Brazilian agricultural hubs of Acre and Rondônia.“There’s a whole part of Brazil that looks much more to the Pacific than to the Atlantic,” says Ríos Polastri. “Chancay has many advantages within Peru, and one is that it is the closest port to Brazil. That’s another incentive for trade.”The inauguration of the megaport is planned for late next year, when Chinese president Xi Jinping will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit, which Peru is hosting. Cosco says the port will eventually expand. “The master plan is to have 15 piers, though there’s no timeline as we need to see how the port operates in the first few years,” Ríos Polastri explains.But, despite the commercial advantages that officials say the port will bring for Peru, some observers — including US officials — have expressed concern that it could increase Chinese influence on the country’s infrastructure.Mario de las Casas, Cosco Shipping Ports Chancay Peru’s public affairs manager, says Peruvian law forbids the use of the port for military purposes without prior approval from the executive branch or Congress. “Without this preapproval, any such entry would be tantamount to an invasion independently of the ownership of the terminal,” he notes.Some local people have criticised the disruption caused by construction, too, though voters in January overwhelmingly elected a mayor who is openly in favour of the development. “I think that’s a good barometer of where the local population is in terms of acceptance of the port,” Ríos Polastri suggests.The Peruvian government says the port will boost the local economy, and local developers are hopeful. Along the road into Chancay, billboards advertise yet-to-be-built property developments for sale. “In the area, there are six fishmeal factories and a fleet of around 70 industrial fishing vessels that are the largest source of work in Chancay,” says Raúl Pérez-Reyes, Peru’s transport minister. “The project allows the possibility of direct shipment abroad.”Construction work at the Chancay port, 80km north of Lima More
The “higher low” pattern, for those uninitiated, is a technical indicator often signaling a bullish reversal in the asset’s price direction. It occurs when the price of an asset forms a low that is higher than the previous prominent low, which is precisely what seems to be emerging in Ethereum’s case. If this pattern solidifies, it could be a strong hint at the underlying strength of Ethereum’s price movement and its resilience against broader market downturns.Source: Adding fuel to this optimistic analysis is the rising trading volume accompanying Ethereum’s recent price action. Typically, an increase in trading volume is seen as a confirmation of a prevailing price trend. When associated with potential bullish patterns, such as the “higher low,” a surge in trading volume can indicate strong buying interest and reduced selling pressure.While it is always crucial to approach market predictions with a grain of salt, the current scenario paints an interesting picture for . The potential formation of a “higher low” pattern, combined with the bolstering trading volume, makes a compelling case for a possible price reversal. Investors and traders alike might want to keep a close watch on Ethereum’s next moves.First, let’s address the elephant in the room — the “death cross.” A death cross, a technical chart pattern signaling the potential for a major sell-off, is typically observed when the short-term moving average crosses below its long-term counterpart. However, in case, its relevance is debatable. The asset’s current trajectory and the broader market conditions do not necessarily resonate with the historically bearish implications of this pattern. It is essential to consider the broader picture and not get fixated on singular chart patterns, especially when they contradict other indicators.Speaking of indicators, the descending trading volume accompanying XRP’s price movement is worth noting. Traditionally, a decrease in volume during a downtrend might suggest a weakening of selling pressure. When analyzed alongside the steadfast $0.47 support level, this paints an intriguing picture. The subdued trading could indicate a possible exhaustion of bearish momentum, hinting at a potential trend reversal or, at the very least, a consolidation phase.First and foremost, there is a noticeable support level that ADA seems to be clinging to. This support level is not just a random point on the chart but carries historical significance. It was around this same price level in December where Cardano demonstrated resilience and staged a remarkable comeback. This price point has proven its mettle as a strong foundation, and ADA’s current adherence to it may hint at a potential repeat of history. In addition to the evident support, another captivating element in the chart is the squeeze taking place between this support level and the 50-day Exponential Moving Average (EMA). The 50 EMA has often been used by traders and analysts alike as a gauge for medium-term price direction. A squeeze like this typically indicates a tussle between the bulls and the bears, leading to an eventual breakout in one direction.This article was originally published on U.Today More
