A senior figure at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) believes a digital currency backed by a central bank would open the door to much greater innovation in retail payments. Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli, the IMF’s deputy division chief in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department, said synthetic CBDCs – digital currencies backed by the liabilities of a central bank, but issued with the aid of a private entity – could provide citizens with a reliable means of payment that simultaneously leverage some of the key competitive advantages of the private sector. A synthetic CBDC as outlined by Mancini-Griffoli is pretty much a public-private partnership. The idea is a licensed eMoney provider stores client funds in a central bank and, in return, receives a central bank liability they can package...

We’re happy to be back after a recharging long weekend. Let’s get to the news. India’s central bank has clarified its crypto stance, Tencent is looking to invest in “emerging technologies” including blockchain and Facebook’s digital wallet subsidiary announced a rebranding and new details. You’re reading Blockchain Bites, the daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news, and why they’re significant. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here.  Top ShelfLibra’s New FaceA statement announcing the rebranding of Facebook subsidiary Calibra to Novi also reveals details of the anticipated wallet product. The Novi wallet will operate as a standalone app, as well as provide interoperability with Facebook’s social messaging apps Messenger and WhatsA...

Bitcoin prices are caught in a downdraft, after a series of rallies in recent weeks that repeatedly fizzled out at the $10,000 mark.  “There is no clear understanding where bitcoin will go,” Yuriy Mazur, head of data analytics at cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO told CoinDesk’s Omkar Godbole. “It may either retrace back to $6,500 or reach $10,000.” You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so you don’t have to. You can subscribe here. Source: TradingViewWith the near-term picture cloudy, some analysts are focusing on a longer-term trend that...

Bitcoin moved back over $9,000 earlier on Tuesday alongside signs of an improved risk appetite in the traditional markets.  Prices rose to a high of $9,010 at 08:05 UTC, but quickly fell back below $8,900, pouring cold water over excitement generated by Monday’s 2.3% bounce from the two-week low of $8,630.  At press time, the number one cryptocurrency by market value is changing hands near $8,860, according to CoinDesk’s Bitcoin Price Index.  Meanwhile, the futures tied to the S&P 500, Wall Street’s equity index, are reporting over 2% gains Tuesday. Major European equity indexes are flashing green, too, with the U.K.’s FTSE index leading the way with a 1.33% gain, as per Investing.com. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, North America’s oil benchmark, has so far scored a 2.4% gain on ...

India’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, CoinDCX, has secured a $2.5 million strategic investment led by Polychain Capital with support from Coinbase Ventures. The investment aims to reinforce the exchange’s efforts to drive cryptocurrency adoption in the country after a major legal victory in March. CoinDCX’s #TryCrypto campaign seeks to bring the total number of crypto users in India to 50 million. Specifically, the financing aims to bolster CoinDCX’s meetup events, community engagement efforts, educational programs and consumer campaigns, the company said. “This new strategic investment into CoinDCX is a shot of confidence in our roadmap toward bringing the crypto asset class to a largely untapped Indian market. We look forward to our investors’ continued counsel,” said Sumit Gupta, CEO...

Binance is forced to “technically” support last week’s hard fork of the Steem blockchain, according to the crypto exchange’s CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. In a statement on the company’s official blog Sunday, CZ said that, while the exchange is “very much against zeroing other people’s assets on the blockchain,” to not support it would mean that Binance users would not be able to withdraw their steem tokens. The result of a dispute in the Steem community over the acquisition of SteemIt – the blockchain ecosystem’s biggest and more powerful application – by Tron and Justin Sun, the hard fork was used as a tool to strip 64 dissenters of their token holdings. At the time around $6.3 million-worth of cryptocurrency was grabbed, with one of the affected parties, Dan Hensley, saying he alone had los...

The credibility of Craig Wright – the Australian tech entrepreneur who controversially claims to be bitcoin’s pseudonymous inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto – has taken another blow. After a list of bitcoin addresses Wright had provided as being his holdings in an ongoing court case were briefly and “inadvertently” made public by plaintiffs on May 21, 145 of the addresses were used to sign a public message both calling Wright a “fraud” and making it plain that he does not in fact own or control them. The court case was brought by Ira Kleiman, the brother of Wright’s former business partner, David Kleiman, and seeks half of 1.1 million bitcoin (worth around $9.6 billion) the two allegedly mined in the early days of the cryptocurrency, as well as intellectual property. The case hinges on whether W...