Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank, confirmed that the regulator is looking into launching its own central bank digital currency, and that it wants to play an active role in the field. While the ECB is mulling a digital euro, however, she added it shouldn’t “discourage nor crowd out” private stablecoins.

Ethereum users are increasingly locking their funds in the decentralized finance space, to either use decentralized exchanges, or to earn interest on their holdings or take out cryptocurrency loans. Most of the 3 million ETH locked in DeFi is allocated to Maker.

Binance Charity has launched a program to help provide relief for the ongoing wildfire crisis in Australia, and Binance itself has kicked off the initiative with a $1 million donation in its native BNB token.

Top stories in the Crypto Roundup today:

• European Central Bank Shouldn’t ‘Discourage’ Private Stablecoins, President Says
• Ethereum Locked in Decentralized Finance Hits New All-Time High Above 3 Million Eth
• Binance Kicks off Australia Bushfire Relief Program With $1 Million Donation

At the time of writing, bitcoin (BTC) is trading at $7,888.62 (4.93%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $3.27 billion. As for ether (ETH), it is trading at $138.38 (3.48%) with a daily Top Tier volume of $447.64 mn. The MVIS CryptoCompare Digital Assets 10 Index is currently tracking at 2,466.60 (0.99%).

European Central Bank Shouldn’t ‘Discourage’ Private Stablecoins, President Says

The president of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, addressed a number of financial topics in a recent interview, including private stablecoins and the ECB’s plans to potentially launch a cryptocurrency.

During the interview Lagarde revealed the ECB wants to “play an active role in this field, rather than just acting as observers of a changing world.” She added that the central bank will keep on assessing whether the benefits of issuing its own central bank digital currency (CBDC) are worth the costs. She added, however, that such a currency could have “major implications for the financial sector and for the transmission of monetary policy.”

Addressing the launch of private stablecoins like Facebook’s Libra or Tether’s USDT, she said:

“The prospect of central bank initiatives should neither discourage nor crowd out private market-led solutions for fast and efficient retail payments in the euro area.”

Lagarde also confirmed there’s an expert task force at the ECB working to determine the potential benefits of the launch of a digital euro.

Ethereum Locked in Decentralized Finance Hits New All-Time High Above 3 Million Eth

Data from decentralized finance tracking platform DeFi Pulse shows that a total of 3 million ether are now locked in the DeFi space. The amount of locked ETH has been growing exponentially over the past few months, notably going from 2.68 million ETH in December 2019 to over 3.1 million at the start of 2020.

Most of the value locked in the decentralized finance space is allocated to Maker (MKR) and its products, representing a total of $385 million locked. Maker supports the Dai stablecoin, letting users lock ETH and other cryptoasset as collateral to generate Dai as debt against it and earn interest on their Dai holdings via the Dai Savings Rate (DSR).

Other popular applications in the space include decentralized exchanges, like Uniswap and DDEX, and applications letting users earn interest on their cryptocurrency holdings, like Compound and dYdX.

Binance Kicks off Australia Bushfire Relief Program With $1 Million Donation

The Binance Charity Foundation, the official philanthropic arm of the Binance exchange, has announced it’s kicking off a charity event to help with the Australia bushfire relief. Binance itself is set to donate $1 million worth of its BNB token to the Australia Bushfire Donations project to kick things off.

The program is seeking donations from the cryptocurrency community, to help provide relief for the ongoing wildfire crisis in the country. Raised funds are set to help “alleviate the impact of this disaster and facilitate the restoration afterwards.” Binance’s CEO Changpeng Zhao was quoted as saying:

“It is painful to see the bushfires burning across Australia as well as the devastating effects on the ecology and local community. We want to help this urgent crisis.”

Zhao called on the cryptocurrency community to contribute. This is the latest philanthropic action being taken by the cryptocurrency community, which since 2015 has donated over $100 million to Fidelity Charitable.

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