Traditional and emerging financial institutions around the world made progress on blockchain initiatives this week. In Estonia, German bank WEG Bank reportedly obtained a cryptocurrency trading and custody license. In Switzerland, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, FINMA, issued two new banking and securities dealers' licenses to two "blockchain based service providers," SEBA Crypto AG and Sygnum AG. Elsewhere in Europe, one of the largest financial institutions in the world financed its first transaction on we.trade, a consortium-based blockchain platform that leverages Hyperledger Fabric to manage, track and protect transactions between small and midsize enterprises. And in the United States, a major bank became the first U.S. bank to process cross-border payments using the RippleNet blockchain platform.

Also this week, the Libra Association launched a public bug bounty program that allows developers to submit bugs and alert the association to security and privacy issues. According to the announcement, the program "is designed to encourage members of the security community to dig deep and help find even the most subtle bugs." The announcement noted that bounties under the program "will scale up to $10,000 for critical issues on the testnet." The news comes amid reports that European regulators have launched an investigation into the proposed Libra cryptocurrency related to concerns over anti-competitive behavior and the use of consumer data.

Finally, this week FINMA published new anti-money laundering guidance for cryptocurrency exchangers. According to the guidance, FINMA-regulated entities are prohibited from engaging in cryptocurrency transactions if information about the sender and recipient cannot be transmitted reliably. The new guidance is consistent with recently issued guidance from the Financial Action Task Force.

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