Final week the US Justice Department introduced it had seized $15 billion in Bitcoin held in self hosted wallets by Chen Zhi, 37, a Cambodian nationwide. Chen, the founder and chairman of the Prince Holding Group, is accused of fraud and cash laundering, together with so-referred to as pig butchering scams. The Cambodian Daily contains a image of Chen alongside Hun Sen, the President of Cambodia’s senate and the previous prime minister who held the workplace for a complete of 33 years by to 2023.
Prince Group’s possession of a financial institution makes this case significantly related to tokenized deposits, as Cambodia operates an interbank tokenized deposit community. Final week, the US and UK applied sanctions to Prince Financial institution, which ranks exterior Cambodia’s prime ten however inside the prime twenty banks by property. A number of reviews point out the financial institution is struggling a run, prompting the National Bank of Cambodia to aim to quell considerations. The scenario is particularly precarious as a result of Cambodia is the one ASEAN nation and not using a deposit insurance coverage scheme.
In terms of distributed ledger know-how (DLT) and CBDC, Cambodia is thought for its Undertaking Bakong, regardless of Bakong not truly being a central financial institution digital forex. As a substitute, Bakong is a blockchain-based mostly and central financial institution operated fee system that’s successfully a tokenized deposit answer utilizing a single model for all banks. In different phrases, all Bakong balances symbolize a legal responsibility of a particular financial institution with whom that pockets holder has carried out KYC.
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Picture Copyright: Prince Financial institution
