DIGITAL GREENBACKS? Two U.S. lawmakers want the Federal Reserve to consider creating a digital dollar. In a letter sent to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) and Rep. Bill Foster (D-Ill.) write that the U.S. dollar might lose influence if another country or private company creates a widely used cryptocurrency, and ask whether the central bank is considering creating its digital greenback. “We are concerned that the primacy of the U.S. Dollar could be in long-term jeopardy from wide adoption of digital fiat currencies,” they say. Full story FREE MONEY: You don’t have to be a trader on Coinbase to make a profit. Starting Wednesday, customers of the San Francisco-based exchange can earn interest on their holdings of the dollar-pegged stablecoin USDC. The annual percentage yield is 1.25 percent. “We’re trying to build more ways for customers to grow their wealth on Coinbase,” said Coinbase product manager Paul Katsen. Account holders with at least one dollar’s worth of USDC will automatically accrue rewards on their holdings, with no additional cost or fees. Full story
WAIT ALMOST OVER: Telegram Open Network (TON) is on track for its planned launch, according to an email from the company sent to investors on Wednesday. Mitja Goroshevsky, CTO of TON Labs, a startup building tools for TON developers, confirmed the authenticity of the email to CoinDesk. Investors need to provide Telegram with their public keys by Oct. 16 using the key generator to receive the tokens, or “grams,” they bought. Notably, the message says Telegram itself will recuse itself from running the network: “Investors have to select validators. Neither Telegram nor the TON Foundation will serve as validators post-launch.” Full story
FLAT-PACKER FIRST: In a “world first,” IKEA Iceland has taken part in a commercial transaction on ethereum using smart contracts and EU-licensed e-money to facilitate the settlement of an order from a local retailer, Nordic Store. The transaction was carried out on a platform provided by supply chain management firm Tradeshift and used “programmable digital cash” from ConsenSys-backed Monerium, according to an announcement on Tuesday. Nordic Store bought goods from IKEA and settled an e-invoice using Monerium’s tokenized Icelandic krona. Full story SWISS ETP: Another crypto-based financial product is coming to the Swiss stock exchange SIX. Fintech firm Amun and crypto fintech service Bitcoin Suisse launched the Swiss franc-denominated Amun Bitcoin Suisse BTC/ETH exchange-traded product (ETP) under the “ABBA” ticker. Nine parts bitcoin and one part ether by percentage, the ETP captures some 75 percent of the total cryptocurrency market cap in one listed product. In an interview, Amun CEO Hany Rashwan said the ETP serves as an important financial hedge and is uniquely Swiss. Full story | 
