News
The Rise of mBridge: How CBDCs Could Challenge SWIFT and the Dollar’s Dominance

The Rise of mBridge: The two countries’ central banks agreed on Tuesday to increase cooperation and facilitate cross-border transactions in local currencies.
Every month, nations take steps to avoid using the dollar in bilateral commerce. Last week, India and Nigeria reached a similar deal.
De-dollarization is a fact, as the Russian president reiterated during his recent official visit to China. Check out our article, “Putin cuts a dollar short.”
Little information has surfaced about how the two Asian countries want to facilitate trade. We do know that Thailand and China are collaborating on the mBridge project (which involves building many CBDC bridges).
Some believe that the international CBDC transaction project has the potential to shatter the SWIFT network’s monopoly. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) collaborates with China, Hong Kong, Thailand, and the United Arab Emirates central banks on this project.
China is concerned about its economy’s reliance on Western-controlled payment networks. Remember that Iran and Russia were isolated from the SWIFT network. Two countries are openly hostile to the dollar.
Some may wonder why China is working on the mBridge project when they have already used the CIPS (China’s Cross-border Interbank Payment System).
CPIS has grown at an accelerated rate since its inception in 2015. 2023 it processed over 123 trillion yuan, up from 2 trillion in 2017 to 10 trillion in 2021. It already connects over 1,500 banks across 114 countries.
CIPS, being a yuan payment system, does not (yet) threaten the SWIFT network’s monopoly. SWIFT is a more global communications system that acts as an intermediate for payment systems based on national currencies. It is used by more than 11,000 banks worldwide.
The mBridge project attempts to develop an international payment network in CBDCs that eliminates the requirement for a messaging system such as SWIFT. Banks would communicate directly with their central bank. In China, mBridge is integrated with the e-CNY CBDC system.
Some US officials are concerned that the mBridge network will give Beijing an advantage in leveraging CBDCs to modernize international payments.
The United States is concerned that other currencies would overshadow the dollar, accounting for half of the nearly 32 trillion dollars exchanged internationally annually.
According to Josh Lipsky, head of the GeoEconomics Center at the American think tank Atlantic Council, the fact that mBridge is being developed under the aegis of the BIS raises concerns in Washington. China is rapidly abandoning the dollar.
Two sources with direct knowledge of the project confirm that the initiative’s technological foundation is a Chinese-built blockchain. It specifically employs Ethereum’s Solidity smart contract language.
Its purpose is to compete with the existing system. Payments now occur in two stages: the message and money movement. For example, if I wish to pay someone in China, my bank must have a Chinese bank account (Nostro) and send a fast message requesting payment to the recipient.
After receiving the communication, the Chinese bank transfers the funds to the beneficiary, usually in another bank. A national Chinese transfer is required as a third step in this situation.
Furthermore, if my bank does not have a Nostro account with a Chinese bank, the payment will have to be routed through another bank with a Chinese account, incurring additional fees and requiring a fourth step.
With mBridge, banks will no longer require a bank account in a Chinese bank. Banks would immediately acquire e-CNY (yuan CBDC) on mBridge and transfer it to the Chinese recipient’s bank.
Eliminating messages means banks no longer need to keep foreign accounts stocked with liquidity, lowering the cost of cross-border transactions.
For it to work, mBridge’s exchange rates must be extremely competitive. If not, the savings made on Nostro accounts would be reversed.
However, competitive exchange rates necessitate large volumes. This is one reason why the dollar is so important to the international monetary system.
Since the Bretton Woods agreements, the dollar has been the global standard against which all other currencies are measured. When a Peruvian corporation transfers funds to a Kazakh client, the transaction is not completed using a Sol/Tenge pair. The sol is first changed into dollars, then converted to tenge.
It isn’t easy to see how mBridge and low-volume CBDCs may revolutionize international payments.
In contrast, Bitcoin is a prospective standard with tremendous volumes. According to unchained, they have accounted for the equivalent of $25 billion in the last 24 hours.
Bitcoin has the significant advantage of being both a currency and a payment mechanism—two in one. Furthermore, due to its decentralization, it is a stateless system, which is an important parameter. Who says mBridge won’t be utilized for political reasons as well?
Central banks may struggle to keep control over international payments, but it is unlikely that they can outperform Bitcoin, a technological marvel.
And, with current severe geopolitical tensions escalating into a trade war, the globe requires a global payment system impervious to political whims more than ever. Not CBDCs.
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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding, But Still Accounting 48% Search Revenue

Google is so closely associated with its key product that its name is a verb that signifies “search.” However, Google’s dominance in that sector is dwindling.
According to eMarketer, Google will lose control of the US search industry for the first time in decades next year.
Google will remain the dominant search player, accounting for 48% of American search advertising revenue. And, remarkably, Google is still increasing its sales in the field, despite being the dominating player in search since the early days of the George W. Bush administration. However, Amazon is growing at a quicker rate.
Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
Amazon will hold over a quarter of US search ad dollars next year, rising to 27% by 2026, while Google will fall even more, according to eMarketer.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the forecast.
Lest you think you’ll have to switch to Bing or Yahoo, this isn’t the end of Google or anything really near.
Google is the fourth-most valued public firm in the world. Its market worth is $2.1 trillion, trailing just Apple, Microsoft, and the AI chip darling Nvidia. It also maintains its dominance in other industries, such as display advertisements, where it dominates alongside Facebook’s parent firm Meta, and video ads on YouTube.
To put those “other” firms in context, each is worth more than Delta Air Lines’ total market value. So, yeah, Google is not going anywhere.
Nonetheless, Google faces numerous dangers to its operations, particularly from antitrust regulators.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that Google must open up its Google Play Store to competitors, dealing a significant blow to the firm in its long-running battle with Fortnite creator Epic Games. Google announced that it would appeal the verdict.
In August, a federal judge ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly on search. That verdict could lead to the dissolution of the company’s search operation. Another antitrust lawsuit filed last month accuses Google of abusing its dominance in the online advertising business.
Meanwhile, European regulators have compelled Google to follow tough new standards, which have resulted in multiple $1 billion-plus fines.

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Google’s Search Dominance Is Unwinding
On top of that, the marketplace is becoming more difficult on its own.
TikTok, the fastest-growing social network, is expanding into the search market. And Amazon has accomplished something few other digital titans have done to date: it has established a habit.
When you want to buy anything, you usually go to Amazon, not Google. Amazon then buys adverts to push companies’ products to the top of your search results, increasing sales and earning Amazon a greater portion of the revenue. According to eMarketer, it is expected to generate $27.8 billion in search revenue in the United States next year, trailing only Google’s $62.9 billion total.
And then there’s AI, the technology that (supposedly) will change everything.
Why search in stilted language for “kendall jenner why bad bunny breakup” or “police moving violation driver rights no stop sign” when you can just ask OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “What’s going on with Kendall Jenner and Bad Bunny?” in “I need help fighting a moving violation involving a stop sign that wasn’t visible.” Google is working on exactly this technology with its Gemini product, but its success is far from guaranteed, especially with Apple collaborating with OpenAI and other businesses rapidly joining the market.
A Google spokeswoman referred to a blog post from last week in which the company unveiled ads in its AI overviews (the AI-generated text that appears at the top of search results). It’s Google’s way of expressing its ability to profit on a changing marketplace while retaining its business, even as its consumers steadily transition to ask-and-answer AI and away from search.
Google has long used a single catchphrase to defend itself against opponents who claim it is a monopoly abusing its power: competition is only a click away. Until recently, that seemed comically obtuse. Really? We are going to switch to Bing? Or Duck Duck Go? Give me a break.
But today, it feels more like reality.
Google is in no danger of disappearing. However, every highly dominating company faces some type of reckoning over time. GE, a Dow mainstay for more than a century, was broken up last year and is now a shell of its previous dominance. Sears declared bankruptcy in 2022 and is virtually out of business. US Steel, long the foundation of American manufacturing, is attempting to sell itself to a Japanese corporation.
SOURCE | CNN
News
The Supreme Court Turns Down Biden’s Government Appeal in a Texas Emergency Abortion Matter.

(VOR News) – A ruling that prohibits emergency abortions that contravene the Supreme Court law in the state of Texas, which has one of the most stringent abortion restrictions in the country, has been upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. The United States Supreme Court upheld this decision.
The justices did not provide any specifics regarding the underlying reasons for their decision to uphold an order from a lower court that declared hospitals cannot be legally obligated to administer abortions if doing so would violate the law in the state of Texas.
Institutions are not required to perform abortions, as stipulated in the decree. The common populace did not investigate any opposing viewpoints. The decision was made just weeks before a presidential election that brought abortion to the forefront of the political agenda.
This decision follows the 2022 Supreme Court ruling that ended abortion nationwide.
In response to a request from the administration of Vice President Joe Biden to overturn the lower court’s decision, the justices expressed their disapproval.
The government contends that hospitals are obligated to perform abortions in compliance with federal legislation when the health or life of an expectant patient is in an exceedingly precarious condition.
This is the case in regions where the procedure is prohibited. The difficulty hospitals in Texas and other states are experiencing in determining whether or not routine care could be in violation of stringent state laws that prohibit abortion has resulted in an increase in the number of complaints concerning pregnant women who are experiencing medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms.
The administration cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in a case that bore a striking resemblance to the one that was presented to it in Idaho at the beginning of the year. The justices took a limited decision in that case to allow the continuation of emergency abortions without interruption while a lawsuit was still being heard.
In contrast, Texas has been a vocal proponent of the injunction’s continued enforcement. Texas has argued that its circumstances are distinct from those of Idaho, as the state does have an exemption for situations that pose a significant hazard to the health of an expectant patient.
According to the state, the discrepancy is the result of this exemption. The state of Idaho had a provision that safeguarded a woman’s life when the issue was first broached; however, it did not include protection for her health.
Certified medical practitioners are not obligated to wait until a woman’s life is in imminent peril before they are legally permitted to perform an abortion, as determined by the state supreme court.
The state of Texas highlighted this to the Supreme Court.
Nevertheless, medical professionals have criticized the Texas statute as being perilously ambiguous, and a medical board has declined to provide a list of all the disorders that are eligible for an exception. Furthermore, the statute has been criticized for its hazardous ambiguity.
For an extended period, termination of pregnancies has been a standard procedure in medical treatment for individuals who have been experiencing significant issues. It is implemented in this manner to prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as sepsis, organ failure, and other severe scenarios.
Nevertheless, medical professionals and hospitals in Texas and other states with strict abortion laws have noted that it is uncertain whether or not these terminations could be in violation of abortion prohibitions that include the possibility of a prison sentence. This is the case in regions where abortion prohibitions are exceedingly restrictive.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which resulted in restrictions on the rights of women to have abortions in several Republican-ruled states, the Texas case was revisited in 2022.
As per the orders that were disclosed by the administration of Vice President Joe Biden, hospitals are still required to provide abortions in cases that are classified as dire emergency.
As stipulated in a piece of health care legislation, the majority of hospitals are obligated to provide medical assistance to patients who are experiencing medical distress. This is in accordance with the law.
The state of Texas maintained that hospitals should not be obligated to provide abortions throughout the litigation, as doing so would violate the state’s constitutional prohibition on abortions. In its January judgment, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with the state and acknowledged that the administration had exceeded its authority.
SOURCE: AP
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Could Last-Minute Surprises Derail Kamala Harris’ Campaign? “Nostradamus” Explains the US Poll.
News
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli, To repay $6.4 Million

Washington — The Supreme Court rejected Martin Shkreli’s appeal on Monday, after he was branded “Pharma Bro” for raising the price of a lifesaving prescription.
Martin appealed a decision to repay $64.6 million in profits he and his former company earned after monopolizing the pharmaceutical market and dramatically raising its price. His lawyers claimed the money went to his company rather than him personally.
The justices did not explain their reasoning, as is customary, and there were no notable dissents.
Prosecutors, conversely, claimed that the firm had promised to pay $40 million in a settlement and that because Martin orchestrated the plan, he should be held accountable for returning profits.
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli
Martin was also forced to forfeit the Wu-Tang Clan’s unreleased album “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin,” which has been dubbed the world’s rarest musical album. The multiplatinum hip-hop group auctioned off a single copy of the record in 2015, stipulating that it not be used commercially.
Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and defrauding them of millions of dollars in two unsuccessful hedge funds he managed. Shkreli was the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals (later Vyera), which hiked the price of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 per pill after acquiring exclusive rights to the decades-old medicine in 2015. It cures a rare parasite condition that affects pregnant women, cancer patients, and HIV patients.
He defended the choice as an example of capitalism in action, claiming that insurance and other programs ensured that those in need of Daraprim would eventually receive it. However, the move prompted criticism, from the medical community to Congress.
Supreme Court Rejects Appeal From ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkreli
Attorney Thomas Huff said the Supreme Court’s Monday ruling was upsetting, but the high court could still overturn a lower court judgment that allowed the $64 million penalty order even though Shkreli had not personally received the money.
“If and when the Supreme Court does so, Mr. Shkreli will have a strong argument for modifying the order accordingly,” he told reporters.
Shkreli was freed from prison in 2022 after serving most of his seven-year sentence.
SOURCE | AP
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