Bitcoin Daily: China Launches Blockchain For Trade Finance; Coinbase Exec Jumps To Stablecoin

The China Banking Association (CBA) has announced the launch of a blockchain-based platform for trade finance.

A CoinDesk report revealed that more than 10 of the country’s major banks have joined the platform, including HSBC (China), Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, Ping An Bank, China Postal Savings Bank and more. Local FinTech firms such as PeerSafe will be supplying technical support.

“The launch of China’s trade finance blockchain has brought together the trade chain of different banks to make cross-bank transactions much faster, safer and more realistic,” said Fang Xiao, vice president and head of industrial and commercial finance at HSBC China.

In other news, Vaishali Mehta, who worked as a senior compliance manager at Coinbase, has left the company to become the head of compliance for TrustToken, which produces the TrueUSD stablecoin.

“Crypto is an exciting place, and I have been lucky to have been a part of this ‘madness,’” Mehta told CoinDesk. “I really related to TrustToken’s vision to foster a new financial future which is resilient to fraud, failure and greed.”

Mehta is the latest Coinbase executive to jump ship. In recent months Adam White left to become the COO of Bakkt; Hunter Merghart resigned after just six months on the job; Mike Lempres moved to venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz; and Rees Atlas went to marketing communications startup Twilio.

And while crypto companies are working to strengthen their anti-money laundering (AML) protections, a Cointelegraph report shows that many of the world’s biggest banks still have a lot of work to do.

Just last month, in fact, the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) doled out a $10 million fine to Morgan Stanley for failing to comply with AML legislation. And it is far from the only financial institution to find itself in trouble in 2018. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) handed out a 30.10 million rupee fine (about $420,000) to Deutsche Bank for failing to follow Indian KYC and AML regulations, while French bank Société Générale agreed to pay $95 million to settle AML charges. In addition, Latvia’s financial regulator imposed a 1.2 million euro fine on BlueOrange Bank for AML noncompliance, and FINRA fined Swiss bank UBS $5 million for similar violations.

“Up until now, the focus of regulators had been on the U.S. and European markets. However, we are now witnessing regulators in Asia Pacific and the Middle East markets becoming more proactive in their supervisory efforts,” said Laura Glynn, the director of global regulatory compliance at Fenergo.