The Hong Kong Monetary Authority shared a list of eight questions to seek policy-related recommendations citing five possible regulatory outcomes — no action, opt-in regime, risk-based regime, catch-all regime and blanket ban.

Yesterday, Mastercard unveiled two new clients for its Mastercard Track Business Payment Service. The New York-based payments giant announced that BMO and Moneris Solutions Corporation have joined Mastercard Track. Mastercard launched the new service for Canadian businesses earlier this year. Mastercard Track creates efficiencies for business users by simplifying and automating the exchange of payments Read more...

The post Mastercard Adds Two Partners to its Business Payments Service appeared first on Finovate.

Payments giant Visa has conducted a survey of small businesses and found that almost a quarter of those who responded plan to accept cryptocurrency payments this year. “I think more people are feeling more confident with crypto,” said a Visa executive. Small Businesses in 9 Countries Plan to Accept Cryptocurrency This Year Visa […]

The fantastic Lantern Rite is only the beginning

Visa and ConsenSys, a blockchain software startup, are working to develop a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot program to explore retail applications such as cards and wallets. Both firms will first meet with an estimated 30 central banks to discuss the goals that governments hope to achieve with government-backed digital currency. The pilot program is scheduled to begin in the spring of this year. Visa To Pilot CBDC In Select Countries Visa (V) announced on Thursday that it will take its crypto services to the next level by teaming with blockchain software company Consensys to create a central bank digital currency onramp (CBDC). The payments giant plans to launch a “CBDC sandbox” in the spring, where central banks can try out the technology after minting it on Consensys’ Quorum network. Visa Trades At $214. Source: TradingView Customers will be able to use their CBDC-linked Visa card or digital wallet anyplace Visa is accepted globally, according to Catherine Gu, Visa’s head of CBDC, who spoke with ConsenSys in a blog post Q&A. Gu Said: “If successful, CBDC could expand access to financial services and make government disbursements more efficient, targeted and secure – that’s an attractive proposition for policy makers.” A CBDC is a type of central bank obligation that is issued in digital form and can be used by the general public, comparable to the US dollar. Related article | Visa Survey Shows Crypto Payments Could Boom In 2022 Countries Are Launching CBDCs The decision comes as regulators around the world struggle to figure out how to treat CBDCs in a changing financial landscape dominated by cryptocurrencies. The notion that crypto and digital money will upend financial markets or replace fiat currency is a major issue. Mastercard also announced the launch of a CBDC test platform in 2020, which allowed banks to simulate the issuance, distribution, and exchange of CBDCs amongst banks, financial service providers, and consumers. “Central banks are moving from research to actually wanting to have a tangible product they can experiment with,” Chuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto. If Visa is successful, it might help bridge the gap between central banks and financial institutions. Visa is accepted by over 80 million merchant locations worldwide. In the last year and a half, the number of countries investigating CBDCs has more than doubled. According to the Atlantic Council’s CBDC tracker, at least 87 different countries — accounting for 90% of global GDP — are considering financial technology in some way. China has already started a number of digital yuan pilot initiatives and plans to accept the currency for the Beijing Winter Olympics. Nigeria and the Bahamas have their own CBDCs in circulation. In early December, Visa announced the formation of a worldwide crypto advisory practice to assist financial institutions in developing their cryptocurrency operations as demand for crypto goods grows. Related article | Visa Is Building A Payment Channel Network On Ethereum Featured image from Pixabay, chart from TradingView.com

Just about every week brings something new to Destiny 2, whether it's story beats, new activities, or interesting new combinations of elements that let players devastate each other in the Crucible. Iron Banter is our weekly look at what's going on in the world of Destiny and a rundown of what's drawing our attention across the solar system.

With most of the major content for the Season of the Lost out of the way, we're more or less officially in the hype period--the run-up to The Witch Queen that's going to see a deluge of details and hints before the expansion's final launch on February 22. It got going this week with a new trailer for The Witch Queen that included a deeper look at the locale and some fun hints about what might go on there.

So, hey, guess who's thinking about story possibilities--this guy [points at self].

There's a lot of room for rampant speculation, but with the new trailer, we at least have some areas on which to focus. The big thing that interests me is the broader story of Savathun and her motivations, because I think everything's about to get a lot more complicated in The Witch Queen.

Sister Act

I spent the early part of the week pouring over the latest Witch Queen trailer and breaking down everything it included, scrounging for clues about the story that Bungie might be trying to tell in the next chapter of Destiny 2. (Relatedly and at the same time, Saniya Ahmed dug deep on old Mars story threads that seem like they're about to become very relevant.) It raised more questions than answers, sure, but there were a couple of tidbits that play into ongoing feelings I've been having about where The Witch Queen is headed. The main one is this:

Check out this chunk of Hive history.

That's a statue of Oryx, the Taken King, fighting the worm god Akka. It's a scene out of the Books of Sorrow, the Hive's creation myth, which seems at least partially true but may also include its share of lies--much like everything to do with the Hive. But I think it's more than just a cool reference to an intense lore thing (which you should absolutely read, as it's some of the best story stuff in the Destiny universe).

I've been cultivating the opinion for a while that Savathun wants to be friends. That idea was somewhat born out with the Season of the Lost, when Savathun revealed that she had been impersonating Osiris and claimed that her (admittedly evil-seeming) manipulations of events had actually been tuned toward a helpful purpose. She claims she wants to be allies, even though she can't help being super-creepy about it, and while The Witch Queen marketing seemingly paints Savathun as the villain of the expansion, the impression cultivated with trailers and hints so far does more to suggest that Savathun is guiding or pushing us in a particular direction through the course of the expansion, rather than just trying to kill us like the Hive usually do.

Let's pause for a second and acknowledge that Savathun is the Hive god of deceit, so anything could be a lie or a machination to confuse and obfuscate because she literally feeds off tricking people into believing her lies. That said, Savathun's actions over the course of more than a year have backed up the feeling that she really has switched sides and is now an active enemy of the Darkness, the evil power in the Destiny 2 universe, and the worm gods, which have empowered the Hive for eons. Her own sister, Xivu Arath, is hunting Savathun and seemingly intent on killing her in service of the Darkness. And in past seasons, Savathun has worked to keep us Guardians away from the Darkness's influence. Whatever other lies she's telling, given the events we've seen and the fights we've actually fought, that Savathun is actually fighting the Darkness seems to be a truth.

So okay, take it as proven that Savathun doesn't want to be a slave to the Darkness or the worm gods anymore. This statue then might just be a cool piece of art with which Savathun commemorates Oryx's battle against Akka. It could be a tribute to family, or a monument to the first defeat of the worm gods, since Savathun isn't a fan anymore. But it could also be something more.

Perhaps Savathun's ultimate deception is that she's mean.

There's been something of a fan theory floating around for a while that a burgeoning Hive goal is to resurrect Oryx. After all, we left a vacancy on Oryx's throne when we killed him back in Destiny 1 and nobody has filled it--something that was a major theme of Forsaken and all our visits with Toland the Shattered in the Ascendant Realm. Shadowkeep is about factions trying to rise to take over the Hive hierarchy and dissent about Hive leadership. And though Savathun might be lying to us, something she said that actually rings true in the Season of the Lost was about her dedication to family. While the Hive gods warred on each other countless times over the millennia, they always considered these attacks to be love meant to strengthen one another--to force evolution through what is essentially their religion, the Sword Logic. I think it's true that Savathun feels for her siblings even now.

So maybe this monument isn't just tribute to past deeds of Oryx or historical recollection of a worm-god ass-kicking, but some reverence for the Taken King. I think it's possible Savathun wants to bring Oryx back--through, you know, some kind of weird Destiny space magic--and if that's the case, I think Savathun wants not only to free herself from the Darkness, but Oryx too.

So that's my big fun fan theory of the moment. The truth we're going to learn about Savathun is that she wants to resurrect Oryx and release the Hive from the worms altogether. The Witch Queen expansion sees Savathun gaining the power of the Light, and while we'll stand against her, Put me on record as seeing that as another manipulation--by the Darkness this time, not Savathun herself. We'll see the error of our ways eventually.

Ultimately, I think, it won't be the forces of Light that stand against the Darkness, but the forces of life. We're already finding allies among the Eliksni and the Cabal, alien races who were our enemies for years (if not, in the story sense, centuries). We'll join with the Hive eventually too, I think, and probably the Vex. It'll be life fighting against death, with all of us living beings demanding a right to exist.

I mean, what if they resurrected Oryx and the Taken King was our friend? How sick would that be?

Would you like to hear about my Orb?

Orbs of Atrocity

In the This Week at Bungie blog post this week, the developer outlined a relatively minor change that has kicked off the outrage that the Destiny 2 community sees from time to time. Venture over to the r/destinythegame subreddit to see what I mean. It boils down to this: Guns aren't going to generate Orbs of Power through Masterwork anymore. With The Witch Queen, you'll equip certain mods to your armor, which will cause guns of a specific type to generate Orbs for you.

The ostensible reason for this particular change is to remove the requirement that players must gather Exotic catalysts for certain Exotic weapons. If you're unfamiliar, catalysts are certain items you can find or earn in Destiny 2 that equip to Exotic weapons, and once you've completed whatever their requirements are, amp up that particular gun. They also generate Orbs of Power. A bunch of catalysts are only available through random drops in certain activities, which means a lot of people don't have them, and it can take a long time to get them. Sometimes you get lucky. Often you don't. Until you do, that spiffy Exotic that you like doesn't generate Orbs. This new mod solution remedies that.

We don't have all the details about the Orb situation, it must be said, because Bungie is dropping additional details later. However, it sounds like Orbs will factor into the new weapon crafting system and that more alterations to the Orbs system altogether are likely happening.

But this is one of those things that has players pretty upset, and it's possible to see why. Currently, you can generate Orbs with all three guns in your arsenal, provided you either Masterwork them or have their catalysts if they're Exotic. And Orbs are very useful in gameplay, since they help you gain your Super faster and can give you additional benefits, like health or ability energy regeneration. When you build a current Destiny 2 loadout, you think about Orbs.

With the mod change, it sounds like instead of having three guns for Orb generation, you'll have...fewer, most likely. Each mod is tied to a certain damage type for Orb generation, so it seems like you'll have to equip a mod to make your Arc guns generate Orbs, or your Void guns, and so forth. That has players annoyed because it'll hinder the ability to swap guns on the fly. Instead of just going from Arc to Void as the situation dictates, they're seeing the need to swap mods off their helmets to make sure they're still generating Orbs, or worse, swapping the entire helmet for another one with preset mods ready to go.

The idea that Masterworked weapons might not produce Orbs fo Power anymore has a lot of people annoyed.

I'm usually at odds with the community reaction to changes like this, because personally, how my guns generate Orbs of Power is not a thing that gets my blood up. It's a minor mechanic to me that barely affects how I play the game 99% of the time and thus I don't really care. I feel that way about a lot of things in Destiny 2, to be honest. This just isn't really that big of a deal.

And I do think a lot of these reactions are, in fact, over-reactions. Most activities in Destiny 2 just aren't that difficult and don't require that much care or attention for loadouts or build-crafting. That's by design--the game is largely accessible and you can breeze through it with some challenge but not min-maxing-level attention to detail. The places you might have to care about whether your guns generate Orbs in all situations are those highest-level activities like Raids or Grandmaster Nightfalls. In most of those cases, where the game is so hard that every piece of armor, weapon choice, and mod attachment matters, well, you're probably going to be equipment-locked anyway. You're not going to be making weapon swaps or mod adjustments. So the scenario in which you're swapping to make giant switches to your loadout to make sure you're still generating, again, Orbs of Power, is just not one I think is realistic.

Maybe the Orb change is going to make a drastic difference to how Destiny 2 plays, or maybe it'll just make things a little more annoying; it's tough to speculate at this point. We'll find out more soon as Bungie drops more details and when The Witch Queen actually drops. But I'm doubtful this is a change that anyone's really going to be thinking about in roughly two months.

But hey, maybe I'm wrong. Feel free to argue with me in the comments below--I'm interested in some reasonable takes about the situation, for sure, especially because while I pay some attention to build-crafting, I know there are a lot of people out there who are much more expert. That said, I'd rather talk about your Witch Queen predictions, your Hive lore deep-dive thoughts, and your Oryx friend date dream scenarios.

Latin American payments company EBANX is doubling down on its commitment to its business in Mexico, opening its first office in Mexico City and introducing a range of solutions designed to help Mexican companies offer new payment experiences for their customers in-country. These solutions include credit and debit cards, installments, OXXO and OXXOPay, SPEI, and Read more...

The post Latin American Payments Giant EBANX Expands Operations in Mexico; Itaú Unibanco to Acquire Brazilian Broker Ideal appeared first on Finovate.

Just a few to keep your good eye on I’m sure you’ve heard all about this year’s hottest upcoming releases....

The post Here are eleven 2022 indie games to look forward to appeared first on Destructoid.

IOTA was selected as one of the projects that will take part in the European Union Blockchain Pre-Commercial Procurement. The platform will be competing with four projects in a second round for this EU program for a chance at improving the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure (EBSI). Related Reading | IOTA Smart Contracts Enter Beta Phase To Circumvent Network Flaws Announced by the IOTA Foundation (IF), the network has reached stage two out of three after it was selected from around 35 applicants. This second phase will last around six months, per the announcement, and will have a special focus on research, development, and lab testing. The IOTA Foundation will receive support from the European Commission in order to investigate and develop “blockchain innovations in the context of testing how future evolutions of EBSI could evolve towards a more scalable, energy-efficient, secure and interoperable architecture”. In that sense, the IOTA Foundation revealed that it will partner with Software AG to implement the developed solution. After, the EU Commission will launch an evaluation phase to test the results of its program’s second phase and the progress each participant has accomplished. The IF added the following: (…) based on this evaluation, a minimum of three projects will be selected to move on to Phase 2B, final solutions development and field testing, which is expected to last another year. Therefore, the non-profit organization will start testing blockchain solutions based on IOTA, specifically they will test a use case for digital product passports for digital waste recycling and a cross-border management of IP rights, the announcement said. Besides Software AG, the IF will rely on other partners and will attempt to growth its partner network. In the past, the organization has worked with major companies from around the world to help them develop multiple use cases. This includes software giant IBM, Dell Technologies, Jaguar Land Rover, and others. IOTA To Power EU Supported Blockchain Solutions? In its final stage, the EU program will require projects to field test the capabilities of their proposals. The IF claimed to be “excited” about its role on this European driven initiative and added: We very much support the strategic focus placed by the European Commission on blockchain and distributed ledger technology as a driver for innovation and growth. We are privileged to be part of this pre-commercial procurement procedure to develop a Europe-wide infrastructure based on blockchain and DLT for use in public services (…). IOTA will dedicate resources to develop solutions and use cases on Scalability, and the implementation of sharding on the EBSI infrastructure. The objective is to improve the protocol’s scale capabilities to onboard and support the users that will leverage the EBSI network. The IF will attempt to develop its sharding solution with a “root network” approach. In other words, a main network will be connected to a series of leaf or branch smaller networks. In addition, the organization will work on its consensus and governance mechanism, its interoperability, and potential to implement identity solutions. Related Reading | IOTA to Release Smart Contract Network ‘Assembly’ And Distribute ASMB Token At the time of writing, IOTA trades at $1,11 with a 1.9% loss in 24 hours.

Crypto exchange giant Coinbase is announcing a new acquisition that will allow it to expand its product range into crypto derivatives. Coinbase says it has acquired FairX, a futures exchange that is regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The cryptocurrency exchange says it will initially offer crypto derivatives to US customers through the […]

The post Coinbase Acquires Futures Exchange Amid Plans To Offer Crypto Derivatives to US Customers appeared first on The Daily Hodl.

It is no surprise that central bank digital currency (CBDC) will be a game-changer for international and local businesses. Then regulators, consumers, and other stakeholders. Basically, CBDC is a digital form of fiat currency issued by a country’s central bank. It was trialed in China and is being explored in many other economies. That said, different trials are being scheduled for CBDCs […]

2022 was supposed to be the year in which bitcoin reached the six-figure mark. Many analysts believed that by the end of the year, $100,000 would be achievable for the world’s number one digital currency by market cap. However, given the recent bearish trends bitcoin has been following, a poll released by financial giant JPMorgan...

The post JPMorgan: Nobody Really Thinks BTC Will Hit $100K This Year appeared first on Live Bitcoin News.