Happy New Year! The year started off with a bang as Grayscale added Amp to its DeFi index fund; Vauld enabled Amp for trading, lending, and borrowing; and Amp’s largest DEX liquidity pool, Bancor, adjusted fees for Amp liquidity providers. 

For new community members, check out previous issues on Substack and subscribe to stay up to date. For additional, more frequent updates, make sure to join the Amp community on Discord and Twitter.

In case you missed it…

Grayscale adds Amp to the Grayscale DeFi Fund

Grayscale, one of the leading crypto asset management firms, has added Amp to its DeFi index fund, which aims to give institutional investors exposure to DeFi projects without having to self-custody tokens. As of writing, Amp is 9.71% of the total index, helping to increase awareness and use of Amp by a more traditional finance audience.

Vauld enables Amp for collateralized borrowing and lending 

Vauld, a mobile- and desktop-based wallet, exchange, and lending platform, added new pairs for AMP–USDT and AMP–INR, as well as borrowing, lending, and savings functions for Amp. Vauld users can provide Amp as collateral to borrow stablecoins or any other digital asset on the platform, and can also earn a yield of 1% on their Amp by saving it on the Vauld app.

Flexa delivers keynote at National Retail Federation Big Show 2022

Eric Thiegs, Flexa Head of Partnerships, delivered a keynote to the National Retail Federation’s CIO Council roundtable at the annual Retail’s Big Show in New York City, with a session titled “Understanding digital currency payments.”

Amp now available on Bitstamp, Wazir X, BkEx, and BTCTurk 

Bitstamp, a leading UK-based exchange, added the AMP–USD and AMP–EUR pairs. WazirX, an India-based exchange, has enabled the AMP–USDT trading pair. BkEx listed the AMP–USDT trading pair. And BTCTurk, a Turkey-based exchange, has added the AMP–TRY trading pair.

Bancor increases fees to Amp liquidity providers to 1% 

The Bancor and Amp communities have voted to adjust fees in the AMP–BNT pool from 0.5% to 1% in an effort to fine-tune the protocol and optimize benefits for both traders and liquidity providers. The vote took place between January 2nd and 5th, 2022, and passed with unanimous support after reaching quorum. Per the Bancor community’s analysis, this means that those who provide Amp liquidity on Bancor should now see an increased yield, assuming average trading volume remains the same.

Metrics update

Current TVL of Flexa Capacity — $1.07 billion

Earn rewards for staking your Amp on the Flexa network toward the apps and network transformers below:

Stake Gemini

Stake SPEDN

Stake Lightning

Did You Know?

Flexa is growing! There are currently openings in Design, Product, and Engineering.

DeFi and payments news

Fed releases study on digital dollar

This week, the Federal Reserve took another step down the long road to establishing a digital dollar with the release of their study on the impacts, risks, and benefits of a US central bank digital currency (“CBDC”). Citing increased speed in an already digital world as a primary benefit, they also noted concerns around financial stability and privacy. The report notes that ”a potential U.S. CBDC, if one were created, would best serve the needs of the United States by being privacy-protected, intermediated, widely transferable, and identity-verified.”

Fed Chair Powell says stablecoins could coexist with CBDC

In remarks during his Senate confirmation hearing, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell testified that stablecoins could coexist with Central Bank Digital Currencies, which comes at a time when debates around the future direction of regulation for digital assets by Congress and regulators are intensifying.

China’s digital yuan wallet piloted on Chinese app stores

A pilot version of the e-CNY wallet app has gone public in the iOS and Android app stores in China. The initial pilot is limited to users in eleven different geographic regions across China, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, and the Winter Olympics area.

Jamaica to roll out Jamaican dollar CBDC in Q1 2022

After launching a CBDC pilot program in 2021, Jamaica plans to officially roll out their Jamaican dollar CBDC in the first quarter of 2022. Jamaica is one of many countries launching a CBDC this year.

Tweet of the week

WallStreetBets & Co. @WSBConsensus

I love the Flexa Network! $AMP ❤️

January 14th 2022

60 Retweets176 Likes

Thanks for tuning in! Remember to look for more frequent updates of all things Amp on Discord and Twitter.