India’s central bank announces UPI Lite to make transactions below $2.50 faster and simpler on the country’s most popular digital payments network (Manish Singh/TechCrunch)

Manish Singh / TechCrunch:
The European Central Bank says that bitcoin is “rarely used for legal transactions” and is on the “road to irrelevance”, without citing any strong data points  —  European Central Bank officials alleged on Wednesday that bitcoin is “rarely used for legal transactions …

Anuran Sadhu / Reuters:
Stolen data of 600,000 Indians sold on bot markets so far – study  —  Around five million people globally have had their data stolen and sold on the bot market till date, of which 600,000 are from India, making it the worst affected country, according to one of the world’s largest VPN serice providers NordVPN.

Anuran Sadhu / Reuters:
Stolen data of 600,000 Indians sold on bot markets so far – study  —  Around five million people globally have had their data stolen and sold on the bot market till date, of which 600,000 are from India, making it the worst affected country, according to one of the world’s largest VPN serice providers NordVPN.

Bloomberg:
Nigeria’s central bank slashes the daily ATM withdrawal limit from ~$337/day to ~$45/day in a bid to boost digital payments and eNaira digital currency adoption  —  Nigeria’s central bank slashed the daily withdrawal limit from automatic teller machines in a bid to boost digital payments in Africa’s most-populous nation.

Coco Feng / South China Morning Post:
China’s central bank: e-CNY transactions totaled ~$14B from December 2019 to August 2022, up 14% from ~$12.2B in December 2021, signaling slowing growth  —  China’s central bank digital currency transactions totalled 100 billion yuan (US$14 billion) from the start of the e-CNY initiative …

Amitoj Singh / CoinDesk:
The Reserve Bank of India plans to begin testing its CBDC on November 1, with nine banks participating, and a retail version by the end of November  —  A pilot for a retail version will start within a month.  —  India’s central bank will introduce a pilot wholesale central bank digital currency …