Bitcoin’s clean energy use exceeds 50%; Two executives of Binance US are leaving the company;SWIFT adds three more central banks to CBDC efforts!
Bitcoin’s clean energy use exceeds 50% – Will Tesla start accepting Bitcoin payments?
Elon Musk had said that Tesla would start accepting Bitcoin payments in 2021 if the use of green energy exceeded 50 percent.
Bloomberg analyst Jamie Coutts noted that in X, BTC mining energy from renewable sources exceeded 50 percent. According to Coutss, the shift towards renewable energy sources occurred with the start of the mining ban in China.
Countries investing in Bitcoin mining include El Salvador, which recognized the asset as a legal means of payment in 2021, as well as Bhutan, Oman, and the UAE. The 50% energy standard could result in one of the largest tech companies taking a step towards adopting the technology.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced in May 2021 that his company would stop accepting BTC payments because Bitcoin mining uses fossil fuels. Musk stipulated a 50 per cent rate for this. Musk, who accepted the return to green energy in BTC, still did not change Tesla’s policy.
For now, Elon Musk has not made any statement on whether Tesla’s policy will change.
Two executives of Binance US are leaving the company
Binance US continues to lose executives as pressure from regulators continues, The Wall Street Journal reported.
According to WSJ’s anonymous sources, Binance US’s chief legal officer Krishna Juvvadi and chief risk officer Sidney Majalya have decided to leave the company.
Recently, the company’s CEO Brian Shroder left his post and one-third of the staff was dismissed.
A Binance spokesperson announced that Norman Reed, the company’s chief legal officer, was temporarily appointed to the post after Shroder’s resignation.
Javvadi, who joined Binance US from Uber in May 2022, had previously worked at the US Department of Justice.
Majalya joined the company from Intel in December 2021.
Regulator pressure continues
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sued Binance, its founder Changpeng Zhao, and Binance US, the US arm of the company, for allegedly illegally operating a trading platform in the country.
Among the allegations against the company was the sale of unregistered securities.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also joined the organizations suing Binance.
SWIFT adds three more central banks to CBDC efforts!
Bank messaging platform SWIFT announced that three central banks have joined the beta phase of the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) interoperability project. It was also stated that a new sandbox test phase has also started.
The company said that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Central Bank of Kazakhstan and an unnamed central bank have integrated their infrastructure with SWIFT’s CBDC connector solution for direct testing.
The first phase of the Sandbox test first began last March with more than 18 participants, including Royal Bank of Canada, Banque de France, Société Générale, BNP Paribas, Monetary Authority of Singapore, HSBC, Deutsche Bundesbank and NatWest. However, over 5,000 transactions were carried out in the Sandbox for 12 weeks. Now the number of participants is expected to exceed 30.
The SWIFT messaging system, on the other hand, connects more than 11,500 financial institutions worldwide. SWIFT even has an uncomfortable relationship with CBDCs, as new technologies could in many cases compete with it. Various CBDC bridging projects supported by the Bank for International Settlements are examples of this potential.
Most recently, SWIFT announced last August that 89 per cent of its transactions were completed within one hour, exceeding the G20 target of 75 per cent completed within one hour by 2027. In addition, 84 per cent of transactions on the network are carried out directly or through a single intermediary. However, in practice, only 60 per cent of wholesale payments are finalized within an hour due to regulatory controls, working hours and batch processing.
