China’s Ministry of Commerce is moving forward with its plan for a digital currency, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
The plan will come with a large number of cities in which to test the currency, including Beijing and the provinces Tianjin and Hebei in the north, the Yangtze River Delta to the south, and the Guangdong province and the neighboring cities of Hong Kong and Macau along the country’s prosperous southern coast, WSJ reported.
The project’s policy design is set to be complete by the end of the year, although there’s no set date for when the expansion will begin.
In addition, the less-wealthy parts of China, in the central and western areas of the country, will have a chance at trials for the digital currency if they meet the program requirements, WSJ reported.
The move comes as numerous places around the world look into digital currencies for official business, including the state of California, as it moves ahead with a digital asset bill, Assembly Bill 2150.
According to a report by Cointelegraph, the bill passed by the state Senate Banking and Financial Institutions committee, which is looking to define digital assets and analyze their impact on the state and consumer protections.
The bill originally set out to distinguish digital assets from securities.
Now, with an update, it also wants to direct the Department of Business Oversight to look into how treating them as securities for a little while would impact consumer protections, benefits to the state and what the minimum requirements would be to enact the new changes.
In other news, the Association of Cryptocurrency Enterprises and Start-ups Singapore (ACCESS) has rolled out an official Code of Practice, to help standardize the industry and aid players in meeting regulatory compliance, according to a press release.
Part of the Standardisation of Practice In Crypto Entities (SPICE) initiative, the ACCESS’s new code will help industry players looking to apply for a license by providing regulatory guidance.
In addition, the Code of Practice makes a more standard approach to dealing with issues of money laundering and terrorism, the release stated, along with know your customer (KYC) best practices, and other issues important to crypto-asset and blockchain companies.
Snowflake plans to acquire Crunchy Data to enhance its ability to help enterprises build and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) agents and applications.
The planned acquisition will add Crunchy Data’s open-source Postgres technology and products to Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, the companies said in a Monday (June 2) press release.
The closing of the acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions, according to the release.
The planned combination will help add a PostgreSQL database called Snowflake Postgres to the AI Data Cloud, according to the release.
PostgreSQL, or Postgres, is an open-source, relational database that can serve as the underlying database for customers creating AI agents with data stored in the platforms of companies like Snowflake, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Monday.
It is used by 49% of all developers, according to the Monday press release.
Snowflake Postgres will enable those who use PostgreSQL to ship faster and operate more efficiently, the release said.
“We’re tackling a massive $350 billion market opportunity and a real need for our customers to bring Postgres to the Snowflake AI Data Cloud,” Snowflake Senior Vice President of Engineering Vivek Raghunathan said in the release.
Crunchy Data Co-Founder Paul Laurence said in the release that Crunchy Data’s security and compliance have made it a trusted Postgres partner for organizations in regulated industries.
“We’re excited to join forces with Snowflake to provide their customers who already rely on Postgres the ability to run mission-critical regulated workloads with increased confidence and security on the Snowflake platform,” Laurence said.
Snowflake said in February that it was opening a new Silicon Valley “AI hub” that is designed to give developers, startups and business leaders a place to work on AI efforts.
Data and AI firm Databricks announced May 14 that it was acquiring database startup Neon to boost its AI agent business, saying that Neon is “purpose-built to support [developers’] agentic workflows.”
“By bringing Neon into Databricks, we’re giving developers a serverless Postgres that can keep up with agentic speed, pay-as-you-go economics and the openness of the Postgres community,” Databricks Co-Founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi said at the time in a press release.
