Wednesday, June 5, 2024

global moves in capital market infrastructure, India’s election, the impact of ETH ETFs on ETH supply, and much more

“I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.” – Harry Truman ||

Hello everyone! I hope you’re all well!

A programming note: I’m travelling this week and next (Edinburgh and Warsaw), so publishing will be erratic. For now, it looks like this newsletter will have to skip Friday-Saturday and then Tuesday-Wednesday. I should be able to get something out tomorrow (Thursday) and on Monday, if airport wifi cooperates.

If you find this newsletter useful, would you mind sharing it with your friends and colleagues? ❤ And if you could hit the like button at the bottom, I’d really appreciate it, I’m told it helps the algorithms to register what I write.

IN THIS NEWSLETTER:

• Early days, big steps: cross-border trade and settlement - mBridge, Rialto and Agorá

• ETH ETFs and ETH supply

• The message from India

• Biases and assumptions

If you’re not a subscriber to the premium daily, I hope you’ll consider becoming one! You’ll get ~daily insight into the growing overlap between the crypto and macro landscapes, as well as some useful links. And there’s a free trial!

WHAT I’M WATCHING:

Early days, big steps: cross-border trade and settlement

I’ve written in the past about the BIS’s blinkered take on the evolution of crypto markets, which continues to assume they are either irrelevant, ephemeral or potentially destabilizing. This is fine, we don’t need the central banks’ central bank to support decentralized transactions and open source innovation, it’s not their thing.

That said, the BIS does seem to be forging ahead with a host of high-level trials of how distributed ledgers can improve the global financial landscape, none of which feel like superficial window dressing. This matters, because it is the only organization with deep connections in pretty much all central banks. It can encourage, cajole, observe, document and, eventually, help implement any structural changes that involve greater transparency and efficiency in the movement of assets, including money. I’m impressed with what it has achieved so far.

Here are three of their projects that have been in the news recently:

mBridge