STASIS said Tuesday its new wallet, fully integrated into the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), would offer regulated financial institutions, in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets, a new gateway into cryptocurrencies.
Institutions can hedge against possible bank runs with a new wallet from euro-backed stablecoin issuer STASIS, which stores assets with financial intermediaries that have low-risk balance sheets.
«We aim to bring licensed fintech service companies to the cryptocurrency market and enable them to experiment with using crypto for its operations without any regulatory or safety concern,» STASIS founder and Chief Executive Gregory Klumov said in a statement.
The new wallet expands how the assets backing the stablecoin are stored. Rather than holding them with commercial banks, the underlying funds are held with financial intermediaries. Speaking to CoinDesk, Klumov said it was a «very significant» characteristic that effectively minimizes counter-party and balance-sheet risk.
Two intermediaries who partnered with STASIS are said to have accounts with European Union central banks. While one is in stealth mode, the other, crypto financial services provider Globitex, stores its assets directly with the central bank of Lithuania, Klumov said.
A non-custodial solution, the wallet will enable the firm’s 30,000 users to buy and sell its EURS stablecoin directly from their bank accounts.
Most commercial banks make money by lending users’ deposits as loans. Generally, only a small fraction of funds are ever held by the bank and available for withdrawal on demand.
Should confidence in the banking system fail, as it did in 2008, many big-name banks would not be able to meet all customer withdrawal requests. Institutions are only eligible for a maximum payout of €100,000 (~$117,000) for assets lost should a bank collapse.
The fear of financial collapse is particularly prevalent in Europe, where the euro crisis brought many southern states to the verge of bankruptcy. Many vividly recall customers of Greek and Cypriot banks receiving «massive haircuts» on their account balances, in return receiving equity and bonds that were «basically worthless,» said Klumov.
Financial intermediaries, like the ones partnered with STASIS, hold user assets in segregated accounts; they can be withdrawn in their entirety at any time. «In the case of a run on such an institution, every customer will get their money back,» Klumov said.
Parity Updates Tech to Let You Turn Old Phones Into Cold Storage Crypto Wallets
Parity Technologies released a new version of Parity Signer, a mobile application that turns old smartphones into offline wallets.
The company announced the V3 beta on Wednesday, which will enable users to store assets, vote for governance proposals and sign transactions offline, with integrations for both the Polkadot and Ethereum blockchains.
Offline, or “air-gapped”, wallets provide the simplest form of protection from hackers and malware attacks. The company suggests that smartphones running the app be kept on airplane mode.
“To keep your funds safe, the phone containing your accounts should never be connected to the internet or even be connected to a device that is connected to the internet (such as a computer)”, the company said. Users should also wipe their phones of biometric and identifying information in a factory reset prior to downloading the app.
The new version allows users to create Kusama accounts to connect with Polkadot-js apps. For all accounts, users will receive a recovery phrase and choose a “pin” to sign transactions. Transfers do not involve private keys, but instead utilize the industry standard QR code for two-way communication between hot wallets and cold signers.
The app’s code was audited during a recent overview of the entire company performed by Trail of Bits.
Parity was co-founded by former Ethereum Foundation security chief Jutta Steiner and Gavin Wood. The company develops tools for the decentralized web, including Substrate, a service that lets users create customized blockchains for decentralized applications.
In January, Parity was awarded a $5 million grant from the Ethereum Foundation.
