On Wednesday, the Banque de France (BdF), the BIS Innovation Hub (BISIH), and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) announced the success of a pilot run of a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC), titled Project Jura. The project aimed to investigate cross‑border settlement with euro and Swiss franc wCBDCs, and launched on a third‑party distributed ledger technology platform. The experimental technology explored in Project Jura first consisted of a decentralized peer‑to‑peer network of computer nodes (Corda) to validate transactions while simultaneously ensuring that all legal, regulatory, and business rules of governing nations are satisfied. Then, there was the tokenization of …
Financial authorities in France and Singapore are actively exploring the cross-border applications of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). In a joint announcement on Thursday, the Bank of France and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said that they successfully completed a whole cross-border payment and settlement experiment using CBDCs and blockchain technology. The CBDC experiment was conducted with support and expertise from JPMorgan's digital currency-focused Onyx division on a permissioned, privacy-enabled blockchain based on the investment bank's Quorum blockchain infrastructure. As part of the experiment, the Bank of France and MAS simulated cross-border and cross-currency transactions for a Singapore dollar-based …
Blockchain, the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), is not the right solution for a central bank digital currency, according to an economist at Switzerland’s central bank. Carlos Lenz, chief economist at the Swiss National Bank, argued that blockchain-based decentralization features are not efficient for a state-controlled digital currencies like a digital franc, German-language Swiss newspaper The Handelszeitung reported Thursday. The economist reportedly noted that there is a large number of technological opportunities for building a digital franc. “One could imagine a direct account with the National Bank. Not that we want to do that, but that would be …
Three to five nations worldwide will entirely replace their fiat currency with a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, by 2030, a European think tank predicts. Dutch fintech-focused non-profit think tank dGen released a report devoted to geopolitical trends of CBDCs on Sept. 9. Titled “CBDCs: Geopolitical Ramifications of a Major Digital Currency,” the 30-page report takes a deep dive on the status of major global fiat currencies like the United States dollar, the euro, and China’s yuan. Compiled with support from institutions like the European Central Bank (ECB), Standard Chartered Bank, and the Frankfurt School, the report makes some …
The European Central Bank (ECB) is planning to launch a prototype of the digital euro in 2023. In the next five years, Europe could have its own central bank digital currency (CBDC) up and running. However, there are still many questions surrounding the prospective digital currency. In what form could it be issued? Is the ECB too late for the CBDC party, especially compared to other central banks such as that of the People’s Republic of China? To address these and other questions, Cointelegraph auf Deutsch spoke with Jonas Gross, chairman of the Digital Euro Association (DEA) and member of …