The European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation will come into force in a year or two, and it “will probably also apply to Norway.” However, “the Ministry of Finance will assess EEA relevance and implementation in Norway,” Norges Bank noted. Norway is a member of the European Economic Area but not the EU.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
The UK hopes its accession to an Asia-Pacific trade treaty will open markets for British business in Latin America, part of a wider effort to revive links with a region long neglected by London.Concluding a trip to Colombia, Chile and Brazil, foreign secretary James Cleverly said trade levels with Brazil’s $2.1tn economy were “not as high as they should be”, partly because of a lack of mutual understanding. “With some British businesses, they don’t think of Latin America,” he told the Financial Times. “We need to make sure that . . . this is a region which is on the shopping list of British businesses.”Although it has a population of 664mn people. Cleverly noted in a speech in Santiago, Chile, that Latin America accounted for just 2 per cent of UK imports and 2.5 per cent of exports. “I recognise that there is much more to do,” he said. “We should be ambitious for our future relationship.”Part of the government’s answer is the Comprehensive Trans-Pacific Partnership. The UK completed negotiations in March to join the pact, which groups Asian powerhouses such as Japan and Vietnam as well as Pacific nations including Chile, Peru and Mexico. Costa Rica, Ecuador and Uruguay have also applied to join.However, the UK faces an uphill struggle competing with China, whose voracious appetite for food and critical minerals during the past two decades has made it South America’s biggest trading partner.Chinese companies have been buying up lithium and copper mines across the region, as well as much of the soy and meat produced by Brazil and Argentina.Asked whether he had announced any business or investment deals during his visit, Cleverly said his trip was “not a simple short-term transactional thing” but was “about reinforcing a serious, really important long-term bilateral relationship”.He also highlighted his journey to the Amazon rainforest to visit a scientific project and his signing of a climate partnership agreement with Brazil, building on £80mn of funding to help combat deforestation announced this month by UK prime minister Rishi Sunak. Cleverly’s week-long visit was the first by a UK foreign secretary in five years but it skirted Argentina, South America’s second-biggest economy, where a long-running dispute over British sovereignty of the Falkland Islands continues to sour relations.Jeremy Browne, chief executive of the Latin America forum Canning House, said that Cleverly deserved credit for “swimming against the institutional tide to give greater attention to Latin America”, given an “obvious post-Brexit trading opportunity”.But he added: “The test will be whether the foreign secretary and wider government can sustain a more multidimensional global outlook, moving from a narrow view of foreign policy interests to embrace new partnerships in previously neglected parts of the world such as Latin America.”
A previous effort by William Hague as foreign secretary in 2010 to relaunch the relationship with Latin America failed to boost trade and investment levels. The government’s updated defence and foreign policy review published in March mentioned Latin America only once in 63 pages.Cleverly said the review “wasn’t designed to be a kind of name check or spotters guide to countries and regions” but had made clear the increasing importance of the Indo-Pacific region, which included the Pacific coast of Latin America.A senior Latin America diplomat based in London welcomed the UK’s renewed focus on his region but questioned how realistic London’s aspirations might be.“We see a certain element of overstretching,” he said. “The UK has the Indo-Pacific tilt, the war in Ukraine, the special relationship with the US, and revived EU relations. That’s a lot of priorities.” More
South Korea’s National Assembly has unanimously passed a bill that obligates lawmakers and high-ranking public officials to report on their crypto assets. The lawmakers approved the new bill during a plenary session on May 25, the local news agency News1 reported.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Social media platform TikTok is testing an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that can converse with users about short videos and help them discover content, an app intelligence firm said.Israeli-based Watchful Technologies said it has found the AI chatbot dubbed “Tako” on some versions of the TikTok app on Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) mobile devices.Screenshots and video Watchful shared with Reuters showed the chatbot featuring prominently on the app’s interface as a ghost-shaped icon, which users can tap while watching videos to have text-based conversations and get help finding content.Asked about Tako, a TikTok spokesperson said the social media platform was always exploring new technology.”In select markets, we’re testing new ways to power search and discovery on TikTok, and we look forward to learning from our community as we continue to create a safe place that entertains, inspires creativity, and drives culture,” the spokesperson said.The effort comes after OpenAI, backed by Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), late last year launched next-generation chatbot ChatGPT offering arguably the most natural interaction to date. That triggered a race in the industry to develop features based on game-changing generative AI, including TikTok rival Snap Inc (NYSE:SNAP) whose “My AI” is powered by ChatGPT technology.In April, U.S. media outlets reported that TikTok was experimenting with a generative AI tool to allow users to create avatars. China-based parent ByteDance is working on a large AI model, Chinese media reported, but it does not currently offer AI chatbot features on its Chinese equivalent of TikTok, Douyin.Disclosure filed with the U.S. patent and trademark office last month showed TikTok had submitted a trademark application for “TikTok Tako” in categories including “computer software for the artificial production of human speech and text”.VIDEO RECOMMENDATIONSWatchful researcher Daniel Buchuk said his team started to find references to Tako on some versions of the TikTok app earlier this month, including on a test version on an iOS device in the United States.Watchful uses computer vision as well as data analysis to identify and emulate app changes. It monitors devices in different countries but was unable to establish in which markets TikTok was conducting its tests.Unlike ChatGPT, which is positioned as an all-purpose chatbot, Tako feels more like a navigation assistant with a focus on encouraging users to watch more videos, Buchuk said.”So if you’re asking ‘When was King Charles’ coronation?’ Tako will tell you the answer, but then you’ll also see relevant TikTok videos,” he said.Another demonstration by Watchful showed that when a user asks Tako a question, such as “How can we teach respect to children”, the chatbot replies by summarising tips from TikTok users while also recommending related videos.TikTok has set a disclaimer saying Tako is an experimental chatbot and that responses could be inaccurate. It said it will review conversations with Tako for safety purposes and warned users not to share private information with it. More
U.S. new-vehicle sales, including retail and non-retail transactions, are estimated to reach 1.3 million units in May, up 15.6% from a year earlier, according to a J.D. Power and LMC Automotive report.New-vehicle transaction prices continue to rise as consumers are estimated to spend $46.9 billion on new vehicles in May, 13% higher than the last year, the report said.”Despite the challenges posed by elevated interest rates and pricing, sales volume and transaction prices have displayed remarkable resilience, enabled by the combination of improved vehicle availability and pent-up demand,” Thomas King, president of the data and analytics division at J.D. Power, said in a statement.Retail inventories are expected to rise 48% compared to last year. Inventory pile-up could hurt dealers’ margins despite the incentives offered by manufacturers to lure customers. “The primary reason for the decline in profit (for dealers) is that fewer vehicles are being sold for prices higher than the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP),” King said.Retail sales of new vehicles in May are expected to be up 9.6% on strong demand from buyers who had to delay their purchases due to low inventory.Globally, light-vehicle sales for the month are projected to increase 12.8% from last year, where growth stands akin to levels across major markets apart from Eastern Europe where sales are expected to be up nearly 20% despite the prolonged war in Ukraine. More
ANKARA (Reuters) -Turkey’s central bank kept its policy rate at 8.5% on Thursday as expected, holding steady for a third straight month, despite a market rout after the first round of elections which indicated President Tayyip Erdogan was poised to win in the runoff.After Erdogan’s solid lead in the May 14 vote became clear, the lira has tumbled to record lows and Turkey’s sovereign dollar bonds and equities have plunged, while the cost of insuring exposure to Turkish debt has spiked. But the central bank did not mention any of these moves on Thursday, and instead said the underlying trend of inflation continued to improve.”It has become even more important to keep financial conditions supportive to preserve the growth momentum in industrial production and the positive trend in employment,” the bank said after its monthly policy meeting.Economists expect annual inflation, which declined to 43.7% in April from a peak of 85.5% last year, to rise again in the coming months. But they expected the central bank to keep rates on hold this month in line with Erdogan’s unorthodox policies that call for low rates.Nicholas Farr, emerging Europe economist at Capital Economics, said Erdogan’s expected victory on Sunday makes the likelihood of “much-needed” rate hikes low.”Turkey’s economy is in desperate need of much higher interest rates and a shift away from the current policy framework to tackle its large macro-imbalances,” he said in a note.Authorities can only use “distortionary policies” for so long to keep the lira stable if Erdogan wins and “a sharp depreciation in the currency is only a matter of time”, Farr said.DEPLETED RESERVESThe lira touched a fresh record low of 19.9325 nearly an hour after the central bank decision, before recouping some losses. The central bank’s net forex reserves also dropped to negative territory for the first time since 2002, standing at minus $151.3 million on May 19, in another sign of the pressure the economy faces due to the unorthodox policies.After years of market interventions and other methods to cool forex demand, the latest drop came as forex demand surged ahead of elections on May 14 on expectations that the lira would plunge after the vote.Selva Demiralp, economics professor at Koc University and former economist at the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, said authorities would have to compromise on growth targets if they continue to suppress forex demand. “The timeframe of how long FX can last depends on authorities’ ability to find FX supply and their ability to suppress FX demand,” she said.”The remaining alternative would be stricter capital controls,” Demiralp said, adding that Turkey is “not that far” from such measures.POLICY REVERSAL?The bank last cut its main interest rate by 50 basis points in February to provide stimulus after earthquakes which killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and caused extensive destruction across ten provinces.Last year the central bank cut its key rate by 500 basis points in an unorthodox easing cycle designed to counter an economic slowdown, before keeping it steady at 9% in December and January.The unorthodox cuts, which were part of Erdogan’s plan, led to a currency crisis and sent inflation soaring. With foreign reserves tumbling, some analysts say Turkey could face another economic crash soon.Erdogan came out comfortably ahead of opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the first round of the presidential election but fell just short of the more than 50% support needed to avoid this Sunday’s runoff.The presidential election could change the path of monetary policy, making it difficult for many economists to forecast a year-end policy rate in the Reuters poll.There is disagreement and uncertainty within Erdogan’s government over whether to stick with what some call an unsustainable economic programme or to abandon it, insiders say.Kilicdaroglu’s opposition alliance has also pledged to reverse Erdogan’s programme with aggressive rate hikes. More
In a recent series of tweets, Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal spoke about the legal challenge to sanctions imposed by the US Treasury against Tornado Cash. According to him, the reply brief which is seeking to lift these designations, filed by the plaintiffs is “worth a read.”Grewal reports that the plaintiffs have made four points which all address the government’s attempt to ban the use of open-source software using a property sanctions statute.Additionally, he reviews the four points in rest of this thread. The first argument states that sanctions imposed by the US Treasury against Tornado Cash depend on assuming that anyone who happens to hold the digital token TORN is a member of a legally-recognized entity called “Tornado Cash.” He says: That’s novel as a legal theory, and it’s wrong as a factual matter.The second argument addresses the law stating that sanctions can only block “property.” Grewal insists that while the legal definition of property is something that can be owned, the open-source and immutable smart contracts at the core of the privacy software cannot be owned, controlled, or changed by any party.Consequently, in the third argument, Grewal acknowledges that no one including the founders, developers, and the users who possess TORN in their wallets, has a property interest in the immutable smart contracts.Meanwhile, the final argument cites that sanctioning Tornado Cash unconstitutionally burdened speech under the First Amendment. The Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) CLO recaps that the plaintiffs used the software to protect their privacy while engaging in core First Amendment speech such as important donations. However, Grewal says that the government’s answer is worrisome.However, Grewal notes that the First Amendment is stronger than that. He remarks that the government can’t simply tell law-abiding Americans to go exercise their freedom in some other venue with far fewer personal protections.In his final point, Grewal adds that in contrast to the Government’s suggestions, the plaintiffs are not asking for special rules for crypto. Grewal summarizes the plaintiffs are only asking that the government meet the basic legal requirements that Congress wrote, alongside access to a privacy tool that protects legal purchases and donations.The post Paul Grewal Sides With Plaintiffs In US Treasury vs. Tornado Crash Issue appeared first on Coin Edition.See original on CoinEdition More
Just a day after CZ’s comment, the CCTV network removed the video from its platform. The video program discussed recent developments around cryptocurrency compliance in Hong Kong. It also featured a Solana-based memecoin that turned out to be a pump and dump scheme.Continue Reading on Coin Telegraph More
