Central bank digital currencies will approach the public soon enough as the banks are likely to launch then in three years' time according to an official survey as we are reading in today’s altcoin news.According to the survey on central bank digital currencies published by the Bank of International, Settlements published a few days ago, says that the central banks representing a 20 percent of the world’s population say that they are likely to launch a CBDC in the next few years and while the relative number of banks are smaller which represent 10 percent of the banks surveyed which is still twice as many as last year. About 70 percent of the central banks are not likely to issue any type of CBDC in the close future while 80 percent of them say that they are working on how to explore more into CBDC in one way or another.The banks that have moved on from conceptual research to development are now increasing in the market economies. The survey says that the smaller economies have a much stronger motivation to develop wholesale central bank digital currencies than the advanced peers which are a major concern to financial stability and payment safety. The emerging economy central banks will also be among the first to issue a general purpose CBDC and all banks will likely issue a central bank currency in a very short time on the emerging market.For economy central banks, increased efficiency and interoperability of cross-border payments are the major motivations for issuing a CBDC and it seems that economies are not rushing anywhere; instead, they are most focused on establishing better international collaboration. The BIS also asked the central banks about cryptocurrencies and one thing that sticks out from the survey is the central bank that has jurisdiction is facing serious civil unrest with a significant uptick in crypto adoption which sees wider public use for both domestic and cross-border payments. Another interesting thing is that while 60 percent of the central banks consider how can stablecoins impact monetary and financial stability and none of them are emerging market institutions.The motivations are now stable but the central banks with firmer plans to issue CBDC are now closer to doing so. About 10 percent of the central banks surveyed are likely to issue a CBDC for the general public in the shortest term which represents 20% of the population.

It's official - we are part of a declining crypto market which has led to lower trading volume of top cryptocurrencies, top crypto exchanges report now. However, a chance might not be on the cards which is what worries many people.A December review of the top crypto exchanges published today by one media outlet shows that Binance is quickly eating up the market share in derivatives and that volume has significantly fallen in recent months.Just like that, the crypto exchanges report shows that trading dropped to $432 billion in December and top-tier exchanges were hit the hardest - are now down by 26%. On top of this, the crypto exchange volume has been falling steadily month on month and was like this ever since the bullish crypto market transmogrified into a bearish one in the second half of 2019.Adding to this, the report that is now viral in the cryptocurrency news also found that the market was very skewed towards exchanges of poorer quality. In that manner, the top-tier exchange volume represented just 27% of the crypto market. The crypto exchanges report also shows a rise in wash trading which is prevalent in the industry now.Additionally, exchanges which charged fees such as maker or taker fees took a hit in December 2019, trading $319 billion in total or a figure which is down 18% from the previous month. Trans-fee mining exchanges, however, fell even harder with a volume of $108.7 billion in December 2019 which is down by 30% compared to the previous month.The Bitcoin price news might have affected the market from many aspects. However, there were some winners emerging from it, too. For instance, we can see that Bitforex was the top crypto-to-crypto exchange in December by its total volume, trading a total $35.64 billion in the month which is up by 5% from the November levels. It was also the top trans-fee mining exchange.When it comes to fiat-to-crypto exchanges, P2PB2B came out on top and traded $27.54 billion in December. However, this exchange was still down by 11% since November. Similarly IDEX was the biggest decentralized exchange of the month as it traded $8 million in December, up by 13% compared to the month before.The crypto exchanges report shows that traders are very hopeful that the market is breaking out of its downward trend and this may push things up a bit in the first quarter of 2020.

The mobile payment and financial services company and app Square gets patent for crypto in real-time point-of-sale transactions. The company, owned by the Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, was awarded the patent from the United States Patent Office (USPTO) because of the revolutionary technology that the team thinks will crack a present barrier in merchant transactions.

“All cryptocurrencies face the same drawback in that they are not widely accepted. Presently, cryptocurrencies, like bitcoin, are not accepted by most retail merchants, or even by most online merchants," the post reads.

As the team at Square gets patent for this application, they cited a number of drawbacks to current crypto spending. For instance, they said that transactions take a while to process and that minor advances still defy practical timeframes - such as buying a hypothetical cup of coffee in a transaction which the blockchain could take hours to record.The blockchain news also show that the anonymity of cryptocurrencies is what exposes merchants to potential criminal activity like money laundering. There is also the money angle, as the fluctuation of the crypto exchange rates poses a financial risk to all business owners.However, Square gets patent for crypto-to-fiat real time swaps and its technology now aims at full reporting. The tech would receive a request for payment in the consumer's asset of choice while using a privacy coin - and approve this for the merchant to get full value in their asset of choice and in real-time.Even though Square did not fully explain its technology or speak about its work (and its point of sale devices), a spokesperson declined to confirm a specific pending usage for the newly patented system.Aside from the news that Square gets patent for fiat-to-crypto transactions, earlier this year we saw that the payment app announced the start of a Lighting Development Kit (LDK) on its blog. Larger than a node, this kit would customize experiences for wallet as well as app developments. It will include an API, language bindings and demo apps. As the blog post detailed, the shaky structure of the Lighting would lead to many improvements in the future as well as low-fee Bitcoin payments “as common as cash used to be.”

Hong Kong gets closer along with Thailand, to create a central bank digital currency that will facilitate efficient payments between both of the countries as per the published report that we have in our altcoin news.Both banks confirmed that the upcoming CBDC dubbed Project Inthanon-LionRock which is technically feasible, it will continue to utilize the blockchain technology to make cross border settlements much more transparent and cheaper with lowered risks. Hong Kong gets closer to the idea after the monetary authority of the country stated that the current payment systems are efficient and as such, they don’t have to adopt a CBDC for payments within the country. However, the HKMA believes cross-border payments are also very expensive and inefficient so digital currency could solve the problem, according to the executive director at HKMA Colin Pou.The banks didn’t give a timeframe in which they will launch and start using the central bank digital currencies for real transactions but they do plan to continue working on the joint project with Thailand. While the HKMA and the bank of Thailand conducted a lot of studies on the technical concerns for leveraging distributed ledger technology for cross-border payments and a lot of discussions about the impact of liquidity and exchange pricing.Pou continued to say that other central banks could be added to the new project or can be linked to other separate initiatives. Central banks that aim to adopt cryptocurrencies are getting in a larger number and now more banks are actively working on a CBDC or new payment systems with fewer risks. The six major central banks including Japan, Britain, and Sweden, formed a group with the bank of international Settlements to research the use cases for the central bank digital currencies.The president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, commented as well, saying that the ECB is considering launching their CBDC but without interfering with private companies that have a similar digital remittance network. Lagarde said in an interview:

 “We are looking closely into the feasibility and merits of a CBDC, also because it could have major implications for the financial sector and for the transmission of monetary policy.’’