China is concerned about the risks of stablecoins.
Former head of the People's Bank of China Zhou Xiaochuan stated that stablecoins could fuel speculation and threaten financial stability. In his opinion, the advantages of stablecoins in retail payments are limited and inferior to existing Chinese systems. He also noted that claims of excessively high costs for international transfers are often exaggerated.
Coinbase clarified its staffing policy.
Coinbase representatives explained that the recent changes in hiring policy pertain only to a limited number of sensitive positions in the USA. The requirements for employee presence in the office are outlined in the onboarding procedure, including document verification and fingerprinting. Company representatives emphasized that national security legislation is not involved in this case.
Hong Kong officials are excluded from Bitcoin Asia.
SFC CEO Eric Yip and MP Johnny Ng were excluded from the list of speakers for the Bitcoin Asia conference scheduled for August 28-29. According to Bloomberg, this is related to a recommendation to avoid contact with Donald Trump's son, Eric Trump. In archived versions of the event's website, the officials were listed among the invitees.
Solana is testing accelerated finalization.
Voting on the SIMD-0326 (Alpenglow) proposal has started on the Solana network, which aims to reduce block finalization time from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds. Voting is taking place from epoch 840 to 842, each lasting about 2 days. At the current stage, 9.87% have cast their votes, with 9.76% supporting the initiative.
Philippine authorities are studying blockchain.
Senator Bam Aquino proposed to transfer the state budget to the blockchain so that citizens could track government spending. The initiative was announced at the Manila Tech Summit. The plan involves expanding the existing system of the Ministry of Finance, where individual financial documents are already recorded on the Polygon platform.