Vietnam and Thailand officially launched the QR payment linkage project, chaired by SE Nguyen Xuan Phucthe President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, as well as Arkhom Termpittayapaisiththe Minister of Finance of Thailand.

It came after the State Bank of Vietnam and the Bank of Thailand launched their QR payment services in March 2021. This has created an alternative means of cross-border payments between the two countries.

To illustrate the practical use case of this link, Nguyen Kim AnhDeputy Governor of the State Bank of Vietnam and Ronadol Numnondaits Bank of Thailand counterpart, participated in live demonstrations of cross-border QR payments between Vietnam and Thailand, using mobile banking applications from their respective countries.

This event showcased the successful application of cross-border payment link between Vietnam and Thailand. It enabled customers and tourists as well as merchants to make and receive payments. They were able to do so with convenience, speed, security, transparency, and at low cost.

In addition, this project also promotes the use of local currencies for payments and settlements.

The cross-border QR payment link between Thailand and Vietnam was launched by the Bank of Thailand and the State Bank of Vietnam. The participating commercial banks of the two countries will both participate.

This service allows tourists from both countries to make payments for goods and services through the mobile banking apps of participating banks by scanning the two countries’ standardized QR code, namely Thai QR Payment and VietQR. The service serves as a fast, convenient and low-cost alternative payment method to enable cross-border transactions and marks a milestone for ASEAN’s payment connectivity initiative to promote sustainable growth and regional financial development.

Benefits of QR Payments

According to data from Juniper To researchthe total number of QR code payment users is expected to exceed 2.2 billion in 2025, compared to 1.5 billion in 2020; equivalent to 29% of all mobile phone users worldwide in 2025.

There’s no denying that this popular form of paytech is here to stay. But what are the benefits of QR code payments?

Rock JanesCEO and founder of paytech Shieldreviewed where QR payments developed: “In the world of payments, the benefits of QR codes were first realized in Asia, when small traders or street vendors used them due to the lack infrastructure for point-of-sale systems.

“Customers with digital wallets were then able to send funds directly to merchant wallets, without the hassle of point-of-sale or card payments. These same benefits apply worldwide, offering direct and simple payments to anyone with a modern phone camera.

“Today, the benefits of QR codes extend beyond fiat currencies and even to cryptocurrencies. QR codes are now the most efficient and popular way to send or spend crypto. This , again, bypasses the need for terminals or a third-party processor.

More views on the benefits of QR payments

Thailand is going digital

Digital payments were commonplace in most countries, but that was not the case in Thailand before the pandemic. According JP Morganit is 2020 E-Commerce Payment Trends Report, e-commerce accounted for just 2% of overall retail, with only 23% of Thailand’s population shopping online. However, there was a clear drive for digitization and mobile payments.

Two years later, this is more evident than ever, because Google Pay launched in the country. A luxury other countries have had for years, Thai Android users can now pay using their devices.

On top of that, users can store credit cards and make payments with just a tap of the phone or their watch. Cardless ATMs have been introduced by many banks: Google Pay means that users will no longer need to carry credit cards. Only Bangkok Bank and KTC credit cards have access. According Way of life Asiahopefully more banks will be added soon, along with the ability to store debit cards.

Cash is King

Despite these positive changes, cash remains king in the country. Currently, it is between 5 and 10% cheaper to use cash than electronic payment systems. This is largely due to their built-in fees and charges. Thailand, however, shows no signs of slowing down in its digitization. It has joined four other Southeast Asian central banks in creating a cross-border payment zone that uses QR codes and avoids converting and reconverting to US dollars.

The Central Bank of Thailand is moving forward with a plan to reduce cash in circulation by 50% by 2026 from the end of 2021. According Thai Examinerthe Central Bank expects 42% of all payments in the kingdom to be made through digital means by the end of 2024, with each person making 800 such payments in a year.

The collapse of FTX has severely eroded user trust in centralized crypto exchanges. Most investors have finally realized the importance of owning the keys to their digital assets and have moved record volumes of tokens from exchanges to non-custodial wallets.

These events have caused a wave of urgency for centralized exchanges to provide reliable proof that they hold more assets than liabilities. In a blog post On Nov. 19, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin analyzed the cryptographic methods deployed so far by exchanges to become trustless, including the limitations of these methods.

He also suggested new techniques of centralized exchanges to achieve non-trust involving the zero-knowledge non-interactive succinct-knowledge argument (ZK-SNARK) and other advanced technologies.

Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken, along with a16z general partner and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, contributed to the post.

Proving Solvency Using Balance Sheet Lists and Merkle Trees

In 2011, Mt. Gox was one of the first exchanges to provide proof of credit by transferring 424,242 BTC from a cold wallet to a pre-advertised Mt. Gox address. It was later revealed that the transaction may have been misleading since the transferred assets may not have been moved from a cold wallet.

In 2013, talks have started on how exchanges could prove the total size of their user deposits. The idea was that if exchanges proved their total user deposits, i.e. their total liabilities, as well as their ownership of an equivalent amount of assets, i.e. a proof of assets, then that would prove their solvency.

In other words, if exchanges could prove that they held assets equal to or greater than their user deposits, this would prove their ability to reimburse all users in the event of withdrawal requests.

The easiest way for exchanges to prove users’ total deposits was to simply publish a list of usernames along with their account balances. However, this violated users’ privacy, even though the exchanges only published a list of hashes and balances. Therefore, the Merkle tree technique, which allows verification of large datasets, was introduced.

In the Merkle tree technique, the table of user balances is inserted into a Merkle sum tree, in which each node, or leaf, is a pair of balance and hash. The lowest node layer contains individual user balances and salted username hashes. As you move up the tree, each node represents the sum of the balances of the two nodes below it and the sum of the hashes of the two nodes below it.

Although the privacy leak is limited in Merkle trees compared to public lists of names and balances, it is not completely immune, Buterin wrote. Hackers who control a large number of accounts in an exchange can potentially gain important knowledge about the users of the exchange, he added.

Buterin also noted:

“…the Merkle tree technique is as good as a liability proof system can be, if the goal is only to obtain liability proof. But its privacy properties are not are still not ideal.

You can take it a step further by using Merkle trees in a smarter way, like make each satoshi or wei a separate sheetbut ultimately, with more modern technology, there are even better ways to do it.

The use of ZK-SNARK

Exchanges can put all user balances into a Merkle tree or KZG pledge and use a ZK-SNARK to prove that all balances are non-negative and add up to the total deposit value claimed by the exchange. Adding a hash layer to improve privacy would ensure that no exchange user can learn anything about other users’ balances.

Buterin wrote:

“In the longer term, perhaps this type of ZK proof of liability could be used not just for customer deposits on exchanges, but for lending more broadly. “

In other words, borrowers could provide ZK evidence to lenders assuring them that borrowers don’t have too many open loans.

Use of proof of assets

The simplest version of proving that the exchanges own the assets was the method deployed by Mt. Gox. Exchanges simply move their assets at a pre-agreed time or in a transaction where the data field indicates which exchange holds the assets. Exchanges could also avoid gas fees by signing an off-chain message.

However, this technique presents two major problems: the management of cold storage and the double use of guarantees. Most exchanges keep the majority of their assets in cold storage to keep them safe, which means that “doing even a single extra message to prove control of an address is a costly operation!” wrote Buterin.

To deal with the issues, Buterin noted that exchanges could use a few long-term public addresses. Exchanges could generate a few addresses, prove ownership once, and use the same addresses over and over. However, this presents challenges for maintaining privacy and security.

Alternatively, exchanges could have many addresses and prove ownership of a few randomly selected addresses. Additionally, exchanges could also use ZK proofs to ensure privacy preservation and provide the total balance of all on-chain addresses, Buterin said.

The second issue is ensuring that exchanges do not mix collateral to simulate solvency. Buterin said:

“Ideally, proof of solvency would be done in real time, with proof updating after each block. If this is not practical, the best thing to do would be to coordinate on a fixed schedule between the different exchanges, for example. prove reserves at 1400 UTC every Tuesday.

The latest issue provides proof of assets for fiat currencies. Crypto exchanges hold both digital assets and fiat currencies. According to Buterin, since fiat currency balances are not cryptographically verifiable, providing proof of assets requires relying on “fiat trust models.” For example, banks that hold fiat for exchange can attest to available balances and auditors can attest to balance sheets.

Alternatively, exchanges could create two separate entities – one that deals with asset-backed stablecoins and another that manages the bridge between fiat and crypto. Buterin noted:

“Because USDC ‘liabilities’ are just on-chain ERC20 tokens, proof of liabilities is ‘free’ and only proof of assets is required.”

The use of plasma and validia

To prevent exchanges from stealing or misusing client funds, exchanges could use Plasma. A scaling solution that became popular in Ethereum research circles in 2017-2018, Plasma divides the balance into different tokens, where each token is assigned an index and has a particular position in a block’s Merkle tree. Plasma.

However, since the advent of plasma, ZK-SNARKs have emerged as a “more viable” solution, Buterin noted. The modern version of Plasma is a validium, which is the same as ZK rollups, but the data is stored off-chain. However, Buterin warned:

“In a validium, the operator a Nope means of stealing funds, although depending on the implementation details, a certain amount of user funds may be obtained blocked if the operator disappears.

The disadvantages of total decentralization

The most common problem with fully decentralized exchanges is that users can lose access to their accounts if they get hacked, forget their password, or lose their devices. Exchanges can solve this problem with email recovery and other advanced forms of account recovery using Know Your Customer details. But that would require the exchange to control the user’s funds.

Buterin wrote:

“In order to have the ability to steal funds from user accounts for good reasons, exchanges must have power that could also be used to steal funds from user accounts for bad reasons. is an unavoidable compromise.

The “ideal long-term solution,” according to Buterin, relies on self-custody with multi-signature and social clawback wallets. In the short term, however, users must choose between centralized and decentralized exchanges depending on the trade-off they are comfortable with.

Deposit exchange (e.g. Coinbase today)	User funds may be lost if there is a problem on the exchange side	Exchange can help recover the account
Noncustodial exchange (e.g. Uniswap today)	Users can opt out even if the exchange is acting maliciously	User’s funds may be lost if the user makes a mistake

Conclusions: the future of better exchanges

In the short term, investors have to choose between custodial exchanges and non-custodial exchanges or decentralized exchanges like Uniswap. However, in the future, some centralized exchanges may evolve, which will be crypto-limited so that the exchange cannot steal users’ funds, by holding balances in a validium smart contract, Buterin said.

The future could also lead to semi-custodial exchanges where users trust exchanging with fiat but not with cryptocurrencies, he added.

While the two types of swaps will continue to co-exist, the easiest way to improve the security of custody swaps is to add proof of reserves, Buterin noted. This would include a combination of proof of assets and proof of liabilities.

Going forward, Buterin hopes all exchanges will evolve to become non-custodial, “at least on the crypto side.” Centralized wallet recovery options would exist, “but this can be done at the wallet level rather than within the exchange itself,” he said.

On the fiat side, exchanges could deploy the native cash-in and cash-out processes of fiat-backed stablecoins like USDT and USDC. But “it will still take some time before we can fully get there,” Buterin warned.

A Chinese company has tagged the terms of the agreement to operate the Karnaphuli tunnel worth around Tk 983.82 crore, saying it wants to receive around 35% of the payment in foreign currency as the country makes faced with a shortage of dollars.

Bridges Division officials said China Communications Construction Company Ltd has been appointed to collect the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Tunnel toll and maintenance for a period of five years.

On August 31, the Cabinet Committee on Government Procurement appointed the Chinese company following a proposal by the Bangladesh Bridge Authority under the Ministry of Road Transport and Bridges to clear local currency payment.

But the CCCC, in a proposal to the BBA last month, demanded payment of 35% of the deal in foreign currency.

The Chinese company said it needed foreign currency to import equipment for toll collection and installation of a modern monitoring system in the country’s first-ever river tunnel.

Officials said the government was likely to bow to pressure from the Chinese company as the BBA launched an initiative to make changes to the previous purchase proposal in this regard.

They said the BBA had already sent a proposal to the Cabinet Committee on Government Procurement to label the offset provision of 65 percent of the deal in local currency and the remaining 35 percent in foreign currency.

Officials calculated that the BBA had to pay around Tk 326.83 crore in foreign currency equivalent to $35.1 million.

BBA’s proposal is expected to be considered today at a cabinet committee meeting on government procurement under the chairmanship of Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal.

Such a development came as the government was facing a severe shortage of foreign currency since the current calendar year.

The government has already imposed import restrictions on unnecessary and luxury goods to protect reserves which have fallen below $35 billion in the current month from $48 billion in August 2021.

The government, meanwhile, has reached a preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund to receive loans worth $4.5 billion over a three-year period to deal with the shortage of greenbacks.

It is also negotiating with the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Japan International Cooperation Agency to secure budget support to overcome the challenges looming in the new calendar year.

The government plans to open the CCCC-built tunnel to vehicular traffic in December.

The tunnel will reduce the distance between Chattogram and Cox’s Bazar by 40 kilometres.

Construction of the tunnel started in 2015 at an estimated cost of Tk 8,446.64 crore.

In 2018, the cost increased to Tk 9,880 crore. Exim Bank of China provides Tk 5,913 crore in loans while the Bangladeshi government finances the rest.

The government, however, has yet to announce the toll rates.

The next Grand Automatic Flight 6 can be considered one of the most anticipated titles in the history of the video game industry. With the massive and commendable longevity of its predecessor, many assume that the scale and ambition of the upcoming game will have to be quite massive.

In addition to its basic gameplay and setting, the nature of humor within Grand Automatic Flight 6 has been an interesting talking point among the title’s fan base. From what we already know about the direction of GTA 6 humor, the contemporary relevance of things like cryptocurrency and the metaverse will likely be the subject of plenty of mocking humor in the massive new title.

RELATED: Why some Grand Theft Auto fans think the GTA 6 reveal could be coming soon

Grand Theft Auto’s New Comedy Direction

Essentially since its creation, the Grand Theft Auto The franchise is renowned for the cohesive level of humor and comedy it possesses alongside its more serious narratives and themes. More often than not, the majority of this humor comes from the presentation of caricatures of society, with popular franchise towns of los santos and Liberty City being exaggerated interpretations of Los Angeles and New York, respectively, as examples.

Given the long periods of time between main franchise releases, all new GTA The title is offered huge swaths of contemporary new culture and real-world societal shifts to explore and often poke fun at its narrative and world-building. This was done to great effect in the massively successful Auto grand theft 5the series showcasing perhaps its most obvious level of mockery of different aspects of society in the well-received title.

That being said, one of the main reported aspects of the upcoming Grand Automatic Flight 6 indicates a change in humor for the franchise, with the new tile likely retaining a new philosophy of just going up instead of down. Although this news was received positively by some fans, the fact remains that the title will be much more limited in the ways of its comedy if it adheres perfectly to this new announced framework. With that in mind, it seems more modern economic trends in cryptocurrency and the rise of the metaverse would be the perfect subject to laugh at. Grand Automatic Flight 6.

By now, many are familiar with the concept of cryptocurrency and the metaverse, with virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum long dominating huge swaths of the news cycle from an economic perspective. Although there are huge communities around the wide range of cryptocurrencies that exist today, crypto as a concept is often chastised and mocked for the volatile and often extremely unpredictable trends these currencies can go through.

Along with other cryptography related concepts like NFTs are also a huge source of controversyso much so that companies like Mojang have publicly declared a lack of intention to get involved in the space, it’s clear that crypto is an easy target to scoff at. GTA 6, especially given the disregard for it in games. This negativity also extends to things like the metaverse, which often goes hand in hand with crypto and the digital presentation of things like the aforementioned NFT market.

Given how influential gaming figures like Phil Spencer has expressed negative opinions about the Metaversethis too seems like a perfect subject for satire in GTA 6. Not only would this brand of humor capitalize on a truly topical aspect of modern society, but commentary on cryptocurrency and the metaverse would also largely fall within the reported new frame of fists up instead of down. the bottom. GTA 6 is ready to follow.

Grand Automatic Flight 6 is currently in development.

AFTER: Fan image suggests GTA 6 map will be 50% bigger than GTA 5

As countries around the world rush to launch a central bank digital currency (CBDC)some jurisdictions have slowed down or dropped out of racing altogether.

While many observers pushed a narrative of urgency around CBDCs, some countries decided that launching a CBDC was not currently necessary, while others tested CBDCs only to reject them.

Each country had its own reasons, with global central banks providing vastly different insights into why their CBDC-related project didn’t go well or didn’t need to get started in the first place.

Cointelegraph has selected four countries that have stopped or suspended their CBDC or CBDC-like initiatives based on publicly available data.

Denmark

Denmark is one of the best European countries in terms of digital payments, as its population is much less dependent on cash than other European countries.

The Nordic country was also one of the first countries to explore the possibility of issuing a CBDC, with the Danish central bank expressing interest in issue digital currency in 2016. Danmarks Nationalbank then started working on digitizing the local fiat currency and the possible introduction of a digital Danish krone.

After just a year of research, Denmark’s central bank rejected the idea of ​​launching a CBDC, judging that it would do little to improve the country’s financial infrastructure. The regulator argued that Denmark already had a “secure and efficient” payment infrastructure, which offered instant payment options.

“It is unclear how retail CBDCs will create significant added value compared to existing solutions in Denmark,” Danmarks Nationalbank said. declared in a CBDC-related report in June 2022.

The central bank discussed associated costs and possible risks, also highlighting potential difficulties for the private sector. The bank continues to monitor the global development of CBDCs has not completely ruled out a CBDC in the future.

Japan

Japan is the third richest economy after the United States and China, and is also the third largest pension market in the world.

The Japanese central bank — the Bank of Japan (BOJ) — published its first report on the development of CBDCs in October 2020 and beyond began testing its digital currency proof of concept early 2021, planning to complete the first pilot phase by March 2022.

Related: Buying Bitcoin Will ‘Fast Disappear’ As CBDCs Launch – Arthur Hayes

However, in January, former BOJ official Hiromi Yamaoka not recommended to use digital yen as part of the country’s monetary policy, citing risks to financial stability.

In July 2022, the bank Posted a report in which it claimed that it had no intention of issuing a CBDC, the “strong preference for cash and the high ratio of bank account holdings in Japan”. The regulator also stressed that a CBDC, as a public good, “must complement and coexist” with private payment services in order for Japan to establish safe and efficient payment and settlement systems.

“Nevertheless, the fact that CBDC is seriously considered as a realistic future option in many countries should be taken seriously,” the report notes.

Ecuador

The central bank of Ecuador, Banco Central del Ecuador (BCE), officially announced its own e-money known as dinero electrónico (DE) in 2014. The main drivers of the DE program were increasing financial inclusion and reducing the need for the central bank to hold and distribute large amounts of fiat currency.

Since February 2015, Ecuador succeeded in adopting DE as a functional means of payment, allowing qualified users to transfer money through a mobile application. The app specifically allowed citizens to open an account using a national identity number and then deposit or withdraw money through designated transaction centers.

While Ecuador’s DE is widely referred to as a CBDC, some industry observers have questioned whether it really is a CBDC, as it is based on the US dollar instead of a sovereign national fiat currency. . The Ecuadorian government cited support for its dollar-based monetary system as one of the goals of its DE platform after it began accepting the US dollar as legal tender in September 2000.

According to online reports, Ecuador’s DE exploited from 2014 to 2018, amassing a total of 500,000 users at its peak out of a population of around 17 million people. The project was eventually deactivated in March 2018, reportedly by the ECB citing legislation abolishing the central bank’s e-money system. Adopted in December 2021, the law stipulates that electronic payment systems must be outsourced to private banks.

Years after abandoning its central bank digital currency initiative, Ecuador has apparently remained skeptical of the whole CBDC phenomenon. In August 2022, Andrés Arauz, the former chief executive of Ecuador’s central bank, warned eurozone policymakers that a digital euro could potentially disrupt not only privacy but also democracy.

Finland

For those who think the Bahamas and China were the first countries in the world to deploy a CBDC, the Bank of Finland has news.

In 2020, the central bank of Finland Posted a report titled “Lessons Learned from the World’s First CBDC”, providing a description of its Avant smart card system, which it created in the 1990s. The Bank of Finland argued that Avant is not only the project that “can be considered the world’s first CBDC”, but also the “only” one that went into production at the time.

After years of research, the Bank of Finland launched its Avant project in 1993. The project involved chip cards similar to those used in debit and credit cards today. According to various sources, the Avant cards predated attempts to create the current CBDCs.

“A key difference between Avant and CBDC systems designed today is that for modern CBDC systems, cards would likely be an additional feature. In Avant, cards were the main component,” noted Bank of Finland in the report.The bank also suggested that the project essentially represents a “token-based retail CBDC,” based on current CBDC terminology.

Avant became obsolete and was finally discontinued in 2006 as it became more expensive than simple debit cards, according to the Bank of Finland. The Avant card was initially free for consumers, but later fees were added, which naturally affected demand for the card negatively, the bank noted. Meanwhile, debit cards were advancing, adding chip card technology and becoming cheaper for consumers.

Despite higher fees, the Avant card had non-obvious advantages over debit cards. According to the Bank of Finland, Avant allowed consumers to pay anonymously because it provided the option to avoid creating or using a bank account.

Related: Singapore MAS says there is no emergency case for retail CBDC, but launches 4 rapid trials

After abandoning its own CBDC-related project years ago, Finland appears to be backing a pan-European digital currency. In August 2022, Governor of the Bank of Finland Olli Rehn promoted the adoption of a digital euro working in tandem with private fintech solutions to make cross-border payments in Europe.

The whole world is now watching CBDCs, and no country is unaware of new financial phenomena – even those that have already shelved their own CBDC plans. While it remains to be seen how the various CBDCs will actually play out, it is also important to learn from past experiences, with many central banks emphasizing the importance of coexistence between CBDCs and the private financial sector.