Officials in Taiwan have warned residents against using cryptocurrency betting platforms to wage bets on the impending Taiwan Presidential Election.
According to a recent local report, a number of Taiwanese citizens have participated in the decentralised betting platform Polymarket to place bets on the upcoming presidential election scheduled for January 13, 2024. Incidentally, Polymarket was the same platform that saw record-breaking trading volumes during the 2020 United States Presidential Election.
Participating in election-related gambling activities is against the law in Taiwan. It violates Article 88-1 of the Election and Recall Act. There is a six-month imprisonment, detention, or a fine up to NT$100,000, which is approximately $3,188.
According to Cointelegraph, the advice comes amid an ongoing investigation, with several individuals already called for questioning. “The community reported that several individuals have been summoned for investigation by prosecutors and investigators for participating in Polymarket bets,” Cointelegraph said.
Kazakhstan has declared the pilot project on the digital tenge, its central bank digital currency (CBDC), a success following a month-long run. A host of business, regulatory and technical improvements are now lined up for further implementation of digital tenge in 2024.
During its pilot run, the digital tenge was used as payment to pay for everything from free school lunches to tokenising gold. Plastic cards were issued to members of focus groups by four local banks in conjunction with Visa and Mastercard. These cards allowed users to make purchases in person or online and to withdraw cash from ATMs. The participating merchant had the option of accepting digital tenge or converting them to “non-cash” tenge.
Other experiments conducted with the digital tenge included making cross-border payments via SWIFT and issuance of CBDC-backed Stablecoins on the Binance and KASE platforms. Digital tenges were also used for tokenising gold, collecting value-added tax using a smart contract, along with a trial run of a move-to-earn app.
Blockchain payment company Ripple has issued a new white paper in support of CBDCs. The white paper states that CBDCs can help expand financial inclusion, streamline cross-border payments, and also reinforce monetary policy control.
The 23-page document was released on December 14, 2023, wherein Ripple explained the basics of CBDCs, their attractiveness, risks, and barriers to widespread adoption. Ripple said in the white paper that CBDCs have exciting potential, with a predicted $5 trillion circulating throughout major economies over the next decade.
“CBDCs are needed to support the most significant positive impacts of asset tokenisation, an increasingly targeted mechanism for transforming tangible assets into digital tokens stored on the Blockchain,” the paper said.
Ripple said the absence of a uniform, global regulatory framework for CBDCs was the main barriers to the adoption of CBDCs. Other factors include a lack of end-user adoption, “little-to-no” consumer education, fears about privacy and security protections, digital identity verification, lack of interoperability among CBDCs, and offline access to transactions.
