20190318-IBM signs 6 banks to issue stablecoins and use XLM-Remonetization of Gold 3/29

Coindesk IBM signs 6 banks to issue stablecoins and use stellars):

-IBM is taking its banking clients a step closer to cryptocurrency.

-Announced Monday, six international banks have signed letters of intent to issue stablecoins, or tokens backed by fiat currency, on World Wire, an IBM payment network that uses the Stellar public blockchain. The network promises to let regulated institutions move value across borders – remittances or foreign exchange – more quickly and cheaply than the legacy correspondent banking system.

-So far three of the banks have been identified – Philippines-based RCBC, Brazil’s Banco Bradesco, and Bank Busan of South Korea – the rest, which are soon to be named, will offer digital versions of euros and Indonesian rupiah, “pending regulatory approvals and other reviews,” IBM said.

-The network went live Monday, although while the banks await their regulators’ blessings, the one stablecoin running on World Wire at the moment is a previously announced U.S. dollar-backed token created by Stronghold （Stronghold USD）, a startup based in San Francisco. “We say ‘limited production,’” said Jesse Lund, IBM’s head of blockchain for financial services, of the project’s status.

-“So we are starting with markets that are outside of the U.S., but it won’t be long before we add U.S. as an operating endpoint. It will be sometime this year; we will get to it, third quarter, fourth quarter something like that,”  said Jesse Lund, IBM’s head of blockchain for financial services.

-Aside from issuing their own tokens, the arrangement opens up the possibility of banks using lumens, the native token of the Stellar blockchain, which can be used as a “bridge currency” when it is hard to trade one type of fiat for another.

-However, as far as growing a bank-backed stablecoin universe is concerned, Lund has a grand vision. He told CoinDesk,

“As more stablecoins come on board, the whole notion of FX changes over time. We are working very hard to expand the ecosystem of stablecoins that will include many more banks and many more fiat currencies – so digital representations of fiat currencies – and even, eventually, central bank issued digital currencies.”

-World Wire may be the first big outing for IBM and Stellar。It’s all part of former banker Lund’s idea for how IBM will play its part in the future of financial services.

-“We are doing a lot of other stuff in the private permissioned space, which is code for enterprise blockchain,” Lund said. “But this is a different type of system and a different type of network, and IBM is convening this.

- IBM calls itself the “network operator” while Stellar is really the protocol level.

-IBM has relationships with most of the banks on the planet. Lund also pointed out that IBM is “the single most trusted validator on the public Stellar network today,”

-New revenue model:   I am not talking about selling software here. I am talking about transactional revenue by way of our ownership of a new kind of network that’s enabled by blockchain; it’s all about new transactional networks.” Said Lund.

https://www.coindesk.com/ibm-signs-6-banks-to-issue-stablecoins-and-use-stellars-xlm-cryptocurrency

（Wendy:  This shows that their ultimate goal is charging transaction fees like what Dick was talking about.）

Remonetization of Gold on March 29:

Financial analysis published two weeks ago by a major Italian newspaper, Il Sole / 24 Ore (The Sun / 24 Hours), asserted frankly that central banks have been using gold futures and derivatives to suppress the monetary metal’s price so they can obtain more of the metal less expensively in advance of its remonetization under new rules (Basel 3) promulgated by the Bank for International Settlements to take effect March 29.

the new BIS rules, the “Basel 3” standards, declaring gold in the vault to be a superior asset, equivalent to cash and government bonds.

From March 29, by decision of the BIS, the gold in the portfolio of commercial and business banks becomes “cash equivalent,” an asset equivalent to cash and therefore “risk-free.” In fact, it is the first “reassuring of gold” since the time of the Bretton Woods agreement. Technicians call it “gold remonetization,” a process that is the reverse of the “demonetization” of gold decided by Nixon.

The operation of the BIS, as reconstructed by The Sun / 24 Hours, carries the signature of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bundesbank, the Bank of England, and the Bank of France, the G-5 of the great global monetary powers. In 2016, when the new rules of the banking system included in the “Basel 3” package were defined, the central bankers committee inserted an epoch-making norm that no one, however, has ever openly discussed in public.

Ben’s take on this :

“Gold should pick up on the 29th or after. If I had to give a wild guess based off of my opinion I would say this goes into effect but wouldn't actually be un-manipulated until fall. But we'll see what happens.”