Frankfurt-based Bankhaus Scheich has created a profitable sideline for itself in cleaning up blacklisted cryptocurrency assets seized during law enforcement operations carried out by the local authorities.

The move makes Gibraltar-based Xapo the first fully licensed bank in the world to offer USDC on-and off-ramps as a fast, free, 24/7 alternative to the expensive and slow SWIFT system used for international payments.

With the Swiss National Bank seeing no immediate need to develop its own retail CBDC, the Swiss Bankers Association has come up with an alternative blockchain-based stablecoin for use in digital asset transactions and DLT ecosystems.

At a Subcommittee hearing of the House Committee on Financial Services last week, the USDF Consortium asked for a reduction in regulation on blockchain use by federally-insured banks, arguing that the technology should not be unfairly conflated with cryptocurrency.

Signature Bank has become the latest casualty of the current US banking crisis, having been closed down by regulators on Sunday to prevent a risk of instability spreading to the wider financial system.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) affected, among others, the USDC’s reserves and this “blue-chip” stablecoin has lost its peg to the dollar. Ironically, the only decentralized unicorn stablecoin project, MakerDAO is now in trouble due to its “reinforcing” USDC-backed component.

Circle’s USDC stablecoin slipped from its dollar peg due to the collapse of tech start-up friendly Silicon Valley Bank, and not that of the far more crypto-entwined Silvergate Bank, which also announced that it was entering liquidation this week.

Following our report on the beleaguered US crypto banking sector, former banking partner of choice for many major crypto exchanges, Silvergate Bank, has announced that it will enter voluntary liquidation and wind down operations.