Bitcoin Daily: Bank Of Canada Tests DLT; Crypto Startup Uphold Gets Into Loans

The SBI Group plans to license Sepior ApS’ wallet technology to use in its own wallet, which will become a part of its digital currency exchange platform, the company said in an announcement. When it came to the decision, SBI said that Sepior’s multiparty computation (MPC) approach allows for a high level of protection for crypto wallets. SBI President and CEO Yoshitaka Kitao said in the announcement that signatures based on MPC “offered our desired level of security, performance and scalability needed to manage transactions for our growing SBI Virtual Currencies customer base.”

In other news, $8 million worth of digital tokens have reportedly gone missing from the cold storage devices of Swiss crypto exchange Trade.io, The Next Web reported. Furthermore, the company’s team said that funds were taken to two crypto exchanges, Bancor and Kucoin. In a statement, the company said, “While the investigation is ongoing, based on Etherscan records, we can confirm that the 50M TIO allocated for the Liquidity Pool being held in cold storage has been withdrawn, and an estimated 1.3M of that had been transferred to both Bancor and Kucoin, respectively.”

The Bank of Canada, TMX Group and Canada’s payment system teamed up for a test to settle and clear mock stocks using the blockchain, Bloomberg reported. The system, intended to be linked with market infrastructure already in place, enabled participants to settle mock securities with mock central bank cash. In a statement, Bank of Canada’s Senior Special Director of Financial Technology Scott Hendry said, “[Distributed ledger technology (DLT)] is a promising technology that has the potential to reduce costs for participants and open new opportunities. Work remains to be done to determine how it can be set up to maximize the benefits for the whole financial system.”

Crypto startup Uphold is getting into the earning and lending product market with Uphold Borrow and Uphold Earn, CoinDesk reported. With the company’s Earn product, consumers will be able to get interest on stablecoin holdings. Through the Uphold Borrow product, consumers will be able to take out loans in the range of $1,000 to over $200,000. In a statement, Uphold Co-founder and CEO JP Thieriot said the offerings “mark the first time that we’ve seen fiat currencies, stablecoin currencies and blockchain working together to benefit a mass consumer market.”