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Fintech Ant Group Affiliate MYbank Is Planning to Expand Operations in China to Serve More Rural SMEs

China-based MYbank, an online private commercial bank and an affiliate of the Ant Group with a special focus on working with rural areas and SMEs, has revealed that it will be doubling the number of rural counties it serves in the coming years.

MYbank and its business partners plan to provide financial services in 2,000 rural counties in China within the next four years (by 2025). This should coincide with the bank’s 10th year since its launch. The initiative will ensure that rural clients are able to access the same modern financial services that are offered in some of China’s largest cities. The initiative should also help with addressing the last-mile problem in the rural finance sector.

This latest announcement from MYbank has come along with the release of the firm’s 2020 annual report, which reveals that MYbank had been serving 70% more (year-on-year) SMEs in 2020 when compared to 2019. This rise in activity has mainly been driven by MYbank’s expansion into rural areas.

Since launching operations 6 years back, MYbank has managed to serve clients in over 750 different counties across China.

Xiaolong Jin, President of MYbank, stated:

“We have continued to record remarkable growth in customer base for five consecutive years. We expect rural finance to play a significant role in advancing financial inclusion, and will further our efforts to make rural finance more accessible with our financial institution partners.”

MYbank has reportedly kept its non-performing loan ratio at around 1.52%, which is a lot lower than the 2.99% average for Chinese SME loans (as of June of last year).

MYbank had teamed up with the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce and the China Banking Association (in March 2020) in order to introduce a “Contactless Loans” initiative, in which 118 Chinese banking institutions had come together to provide supportive loans for small and medium-sized businesses as they tried to maintain operations.

The initiatve reportedly offered more than RMB 870 billion worth of loans to many different SMEs in sectors that were negatively impacted by the COVID-19 outbreak (including local dining and retail outlets).

During the 6 months since the campaign began, MYbank and its partner banks have waived RMB 665 million in interest payments for Chinese SMEs.

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DeFi adoption on the Binance Smart Chain reaches new highs

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has taken a well-deserved break from the spotlight over the past couple of months after being one of the hottest sectors at the start of 2021, but recent growth on several top platforms may hint at another DeFi run in the near future. 

While projects that operate on the Ethereum (ETH) network continue to deal with wild fluctuations in gas fees and transaction times, several that operate on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) have seen an uptick in protocol activity and token value over the past week.

XVS/USDT vs. CAKE/USDT vs. LINA/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Three projects on the BSC that have seen increases in trading volume, price and activity within their DeFi protocols are Venus (XVS), PancakeSwap (CAKE) and Linear Finance (LINA).

XVS/USDT

The Venus protocol is an algorithmic money market and synthetic stablecoin protocol that provides a lending and borrowing solution for DeFi on the BSC.

Recent bullishness for the project began to increase around April 20 when it was revealed that a proposal was submitted to add Dogecoin (DOGE) to the Venus money market.

Following an initial price surge and pullback, momentum and price activity for the project saw another surge on April 29 following the announcement of the Venus Reward Token (VRT) and Venus nonfungible token (NFT) airdrops.

The announcement of the airdrops combined with the listing of XVS on the Crypto.com exchange helped spark a 70% rally in the price of Venus from a low of $72 on April 29 to a new all-time high at $124 on April 30.

XVS/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

At the time of writing, the total value locked (TVL) in Venus is nearing $10 billion.

CAKE/USDT

PancakeSwap is a BSC-based automated market maker (AMM) similar to Uniswap (UNI) that allows users to exchange tokens and earn a portion of fees through yield farming.

Data from TradingView shows that the price of CAKE rallied 102% over the past week, going from a low of $21.90 on April 23 to a new record high at $44.28 on April 30 as token holders engage with the low fee, high yield protocol.

CAKE/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Price action for CAKE has seen a steady rise over the past week following the launch of V2 farms on April 23 and the successful completion of token migration on April 24.

Since the migration and launch of the new liquidity pools, the TVL on PancakeSwap has spiked to $9.873 billion making the protocol the second-ranked DeFi protocol by TVL.

Total value locked on PancakeSwap. Source: Defistation

According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, market conditions for CAKE have been favorable for some time. 

The VORTECS™ Score, exclusive to Cointelegraph, is an algorithmic comparison of historic and current market conditions derived from a combination of data points including market sentiment, trading volume, recent price movements and Twitter activity.

VORTECS™ Score (green) vs. CAKE price. Source: Cointelegraph Markets Pro

As seen in the chart above, the VORTECS™ Score for CAKE began to pick up on April 24 and reached a high of 7 around 14 hours before the price increased 62% over the next five days.

LINA/USDT

Linear Finance (LINA) is a decentralized delta-one asset protocol that enables the creation of synthetic asset tokens to represent traditional assets like commodities, forex, market indices and other thematic sectors which can then be traded on the Linear exchange.

Data from TradingView shows that the price of LINA has climbed 70% over the past week, rising from a low of $0.069 on April 23 to an intraday high of $0.1164 on April 30 with $196 million in 24-hour trading volume.

LINA/USDT 4-hour chart. Source: TradingView

The recent momentum for the project began to build ahead of the April 27 ask-me-anything session with the Moonbeam Network, which calls itself the “easiest on-ramp to Polkadot” thanks to Ethereum-compatible smart contracts on a Polkadot parachain.

Cross-chain interoperability has been one of the major themes of the 2021 bull market, so the prospect of being able to operate LINA on the Polkadot network as well as the BSC and the Ethereum network may have helped to spark a new round of interest in the protocol.

As the pool of retail and institutional investors participating in the cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to grow, DeFi protocols on BSC are well-positioned to see significant gains thanks to low fees and high yield opportunities.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.

DeFi adoption on the Binance Smart Chain reaches new highs

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Australian senate committee calls for national blockchain land registry

An Australian senate committee has published a report calling for a blockchain-based national land registry, better clarity over laws relating to smart contracts, and continued efforts to establish international standards for DLT.

The Select Committee on Australia as a Technology and Financial Centre’s second interim report offers 23 recommendations spanning blockchain, consumer data, and corporate taxation.

Five recommendations deal specifically with blockchain and digital assets, including that the Council of Financial Regulators Cyber Working Group takes into account international data standards.

The committee recommended that National Cabinet consider supporting a blockchain-powered national land registry as a pilot project for Commonwealth-State cooperation on “RegTech’ to highlight ways to streamline administrative processes in both the public and private sectors.

“The committee was particularly impressed with the potential for blockchain to drive efficiencies in the area of land registries, and is recommending that this issue be further explored in the context of the National Cabinet.”

Zooming out, the committee noted there was a need for more clarity and certainty in digital asset regulations, and highlighted concerns from industry stakeholders regarding “the uncertain status” of smart contracts under Australian law.

Despite hearing about the concerns, the committee didn’t hear many solutions:

“While the committee heard extensive evidence on the need for such regulation, it heard less on concrete ideas for how this regulation should best be crafted.” 

Instead it recommended the Australian Government “consider how best to improve clarity with respect to the standing of smart contracts.”

The report called on the Department of Industry, Science, Energy, and Resources, or DISER, to publish regular updates on the progress of the National Blockchain Roadmap and to to review and update the roadmap as the space evolved. 

Moving forward, the committee plans to review how capital gains are applied to cryptocurrency transactions, and give deeper consideration to the regulatory implications of central bank digital currencies and stablecoins during the final phase of its inquiries.

Australian senate committee calls for national blockchain land registry

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Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction: BTC/USD Is Trading Marginally, Breaks Above The $55,000 Resistance

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction – April 27, 2021
Bitcoin bulls have cleared the initial resistance level as they approach the resistance at $58,000. On the upside, if buyers can push BTC price above the $58,000 support, Bitcoin will resume upside momentum. Besides, the king coin will be out of the bearish trend line. Presently, the BTC/USD price is fluctuating below and above the $55,000 support as buyers push the coin on the upside.

Resistance Levels: $65,000, $70,000, $75,000
Support Levels: $50,000, $45,000, $40,000

BTC/USD – Daily Chart

Bitcoin bulls are struggling to break above the $55,000 price level. The king coin is facing selling pressure at the $55,000 high. In previous price action, on March 26, BTC price rebounded above the $51,000 support as price rallied to $60,000 overhead resistance. After retesting the $60,000 high, BTC price pulled back to $58,000 support to rally above the $60,000 overhead resistance. Bitcoin is trading at $54,967 at the time of writing. Today, if price rebounds above the current support, a retest at $60,000 overhead resistance is possible. Similarly, if BTC price faces rejection from the recent high, Bitcoin may fall into a deeper correction.

South Korea To Pay Crypto Tax In 2022, By Minister
South Korea, finance minister, Hong Nam-ki has confirmed government readiness to begin taxing capital gains from crypto trading in 2022. He said cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin will be taxed as “intangible assets.” That is, “It’s inevitable, we will need to impose taxes on gains from trading of virtual assets,” South Korean lawmakers initially proposed 20% capital gain tax on crypto trading in 2020. Later in 2020, the South Korean government officially postponed 20% capital gain tax until 2022.

BTC/USD – 4 Hour Chart

Bitcoin price is trading marginally as price breaks above the $55,000 resistance. The Fibonacci tool has indicated a downward movement of price if Bitcoin faces rejection at the recent high. On April 18 downtrend; a retraced candle body tested the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level. The retracement implies that Bitcoin will fall to level 1.618 Fibonacci extension or the low of $41,639.90. Bitcoin is trading in the overbought region and there is a tendency for price to fall at the overbought region of the market.

Bitcoin (BTC) Price Prediction: BTC/USD Is Trading Marginally, Breaks Above The $55,000 Resistance

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mStable launches on Polygon, hopes to attract defi users ‘priced out’ of ETH

Defi-yield protocol mStable has become the latest to embrace second-layer scaling solutions, announcing its deployment on Polygon (formerly known as Matic) today. 

mStable’s interest-generating savings account, two of its “risk minimized meta-stablecoins,” and asset swapping features are now live on Polygon, offering its users reduced fees when compared to its Ethereum mainnet deployment.

Polygon is a layer-two network that processes transactions on its sidechain before bundling them together into the next block produced by the Ethereum mainnet.

In an April 27 announcement, mStable emphasized the barrier posed by Ethereum’s recent gas fee crisis to the DeFi sector’s mission to democratize finance:

“With savings rates at near zero in traditional finance, there exists an enormous latent demand for a secure, dependable and high yielding savings account. mStable Save was built to fulfil this demand, but unfortunately, given Ethereum’s recently sky-high gas fees, most users have been priced out.”

CEO James Simpson expressed his support for Polygon’s scaling solution stating: “Polygon is scalable, offers nearly free transactions, has attracted DeFi heavyweights and with them billions in liquidity. This is all done while being anchored to the Ethereum mainchain and to its community.”

mStable also teased three major upcoming releases for its Polygon deployment, including liquidity incentives, free transactions in partnership with Biconomy, and a bridge between its Polygon and Ethereum mainnet versions.

The protocol’s deployment on Polygon comes as an increasing number of DeFi protocols are exploring second-layer solutions, with Aave recently attracting $1 billion worth of liquidity to its Polygon release within 10 days of launch.

mStable launches on Polygon, hopes to attract defi users \’priced out\’ of ETH

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