Iranian Crypto Negotiations
Following rumors of a national cryptocurrency, Iran is reportedly in talks with eight countries to carry out financial transactions in cryptocurrencies, local daily newspaper Tehran Times reports.
The article states that Iran has already begun negotiations with South Africa, the United Kingdom, Russia, Switzerland, France, Austria, Germany, and Bosnia, to review the matter.
It is alleged that the talks on crypto transactions were held in order to bypass the ongoing United States sanctions against Iran, which happens to be the stated purpose of the Iranian coin.
In November 2018, U.S. president Donald Trump fully restored all Iranian sanctions that had been eased in 2015, with the ultimate goal of reducing the U.S.’s use of Iranian oil. The U.S. administration has warned about severe penalties for companies that evade the imposed sanctions.
Iran could unveil its state-backed cryptocurrency at the Electronic Banking and Payment Systems conference in Tehran, which takes place early February. However, Iran is not the only country that sees cryptocurrencies as an effective way to overcome US sanctions. Venezuela developed a national oil-backed currency, the Petro, to reactivate its struggling economy and to avoid restrictions imposed by U.S. and EU.
Swift Partners With Blockchain Start-up R3
SWIFT, the financial messaging service for the world’s biggest banks, is partnering with blockchain start-up R3. R3 manages a consortium of large financial institutions and is aimed at bridging the gap between blockchain technology and the banking industry.
Gottfried Leibbrandt, Swift’s chief executive, said the institution would integrate the R3 platform with its new payments framework GPI, where users can initiate a payment on the trading platform and then it goes into GPI which stands for Global Payments Innovation.
The CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, said at the panel discussion that Ripple was open to working with SWIFT, even though both companies are not in formal talks about a possible partnership. SWIFT still remains a leader in cross-border payments, with more than 11,000 institutions using its platform. It moves about $200 billion across the border every day.
Due to a large number of daily transactions, the SWIFT platform can be expensive, and sometimes takes days for payments to be processed. Ripple’s Garlinghouse states that the weakness of this model is because it still uses a centralized system, as opposed to a blockchain model that focuses on decentralization.
According to Leibbrandt, SWIFT’s reluctance about blockchain is amplified by concerns over the volatility that comes with cryptocurrencies.
And this week’s Airdrops:
XPChain
XPChain is an open source project aimed at a society that enables people to gain new experiences by connecting people in the real world using the XPC cryptocurrency. The eXPerience Chain project aims to leverage the experience gained from others by using cryptocurrency to lead people’s life long asset. XPC is airdropping 25000 XPC tokens valued at 1 USD to participants.
How to join this Airdrop:
- Go to the XPChain Airdrop page
- Download the XPC Wallet
- Submit your XPC Wallet address
- Perform the different social tasks
FortFC
FortFC is a liquidity provider on the cryptocurrency market that aggregates buy and sell orders simultaneously from a pool of the most popular world exchanges and accumulates the necessary liquidity volume at the right time specifically for its customers. FortFC is having a second round airdrop of up to 64 FFCT tokens valued at 12.80 USD. The current ICO price is 1 FFCT equaling 0.20 USD.
How to join this Airdrop:
- Register for the FortFC Round 2 Airdrop
- Verify your email & phone number
- Pass the KYC verification procedure
- Click on ”Bounty Program” in your dashboard
- Follow FortFC on Telegram, group & channel
- Subscribe to Youtube & Like all their videos
- Follow FortFC on Instagram and like their posts
