The Bank of England will take part in a key meeting tomorrow to discuss central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and their possible infrastructural designs. Hosted by global central banking think tank, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), on Aug. 19, the roundtable will involve the BoE’s senior fintech specialist, Simon Scorer, alongside delegates from the Swiss National Bank, ING Nederland and the Hungarian National Bank (Magyar Nemzeti Bank). The CEO of enterprise-focused blockchain platform Cypherium, Sky Guo, will also join the discussion. A key focus of the meeting will be to tackle the ways in which blockchain technology …

While Facebook’s Libra project might have shaken the United States government the most, the aftershocks were felt all over the world. The European Union was no exception: The publication of the first Libra white paper in 2019 led to the acknowledgment that the EU was not prepared for what appeared to be the first global stablecoin that would have a direct effect on the European financial market, retail payments and its overall economy. In the words of both the European Council and the European Commission (the EU’s supreme political body and executive arm, respectively), “No global ’stablecoin’ arrangement should begin …

Thailand’s central bank is looking at smart contracts and decentralized finance (DeFi) implementations for its national digital currency, the digital baht. Vijak Sethaput, senior developer for the Bank of Thailand’s (BoT) central bank digital currency project Inthanon, discussed the country’s CBDC progress in an interview hosted by a global think tank for central banking, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, on Aug. 13. Sethaput was joined by Sky Guo, CEO of New York-based enterprise blockchain firm Cypherium, which is focused on global CBDC implementations and interoperability. In the interview, Guo said that global jurisdictions can borrow from the DeFi …

China’s Commerce Ministry announced today that it will expand the trials of the nation’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) to include Beijing, as well as Tianjin and Hebei provinces. According to an Aug. 14 report by the Wall Street Journal, there is not yet a set time when the expanded pilot program of the Chinese CBDC will begin. Still, the nation’s Ministry of Commerce announced that the policy framework should be complete by the end of 2020. As Cointelegraph reported earlier this week, the expanded pilot will also include the Hong Kong Greater Bay area — consisting of nine cities …

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has entered into a partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to better understand the concept of digital currencies. The bank will work with MIT researchers on a multiyear project to develop and test the use cases of a “hypothetical” central bank digital currency (CBDC), said Fed Governor Lael Brainard during her speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She said that digital currencies bring both opportunities and threats related to privacy, illicit activity and financial stability, and the Reserve must clearly understand both aspects of it as they proceed towards the …

Blockchain firm Apollo Fintech has announced the completion of its National Payment Platform, or NPP on August 12. This new blockchain platform is a cashless system that supposedly enables a central bank to issue central bank digital currency for national adoption. The NPP system reportedly allows a government agency and central bank to onboard commercial banks and agents after CBDC is issued. It will include features such as SMS, QR codes, cards and offline codes on a mobile application that allows individuals and merchants to transact in a hypothetical CBDC. CEO of Apollo Fintech Stephen McCullah said, "[NPP] allows economic …

China’s digital yuan, also known as the digital currency electronic payment, or DCEP project, will be rolled out for testing at Hong Kong’s Greater Bay Area in the coming weeks, local news agency the Southern Daily reports on Aug. 12. The Greater Bay Area, or GBA, is a megapolis consisting of nine cities including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, as well as Hong Kong, and Macau. A major financial and tech hub in Asia, the GBA has a combined population of over 69 million people and GDP of around $1.5 trillion. He Xiaojun, director of the Local Financial Supervision Administration Bureau of Guangdong …

Dr. Richard Stallman is well-known for his free software movement activism. His speeches and work revolve around a term: freedom. And it is precisely that word that prompted Stallman to launch the GNU Project, founding the Free Software Foundation and releasing the GNU General Public License, among other projects, to promote the free software concept. RMS, as Dr. Stallman is also known, has some opinions regarding the concept of cryptocurrencies that have been widely discussed within the crypto community. Three freedoms To understand the concept of freedom Stallman often mentions in his speeches, he explains the difference between "free software" …

A group of state-run commercial banks in China are reportedly conducting a large-scale internal testing of a digital wallet designed for China’s national digital currency, the digital yuan. According to an Aug. 5 report by Reuters, the banks are testing the wallet application to transfer money and make payments in China’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC. As reported, the development was initially revealed to China’s state-backed newspaper the 21st Century Business Herald by several employees at involved state banks in cities including Shenzhen. The new development represents another major milestone in China’s progress in adopting the digital yuan and …

Ryozo Himino, the new commissioner of Japan's Financial Services Agency, says the agency is wary of deregulating private cryptocurrencies. Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic could accelerate the transition to a cashless society, Himono instead emphasized the potential role of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to spearhead innovation in digital payments. “Deregulating Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies may not necessarily promote technical innovation, if doing so simply increases speculative trading,” he told reporters on Aug. 5. Japan should think "really hard" about whether to issue a CBDC Himono — whose proactive engagement with cryptocurrencies has been welcomed by voices in the industry …

The People’s Bank of China is purportedly planning to use its digital currency electronic system (DCEP) — another moniker for its central bank digital currency — to target the dominance of technology giants like Alibaba and Tencent in the digital payments sector. The report comes only a few days after claims of the central bank prompting a top antitrust agency to launch a probe against Alipay and WeChat Pay for using their dominance to suppress competition. According to the Financial Times, even regulators and executives of Alibaba’s financial group Ant agreed that PBoC will target the market dominance of Alipay …

The former vice president of China’s central bank pushed for central bank digital currencies positioning it as a substitute for cash in circulation. Wang Yongli, former vice president of Bank of China and a director of the Haixia Blockchain Research Institute, said digital currencies can certainly be a substitute for cash but it shouldn’t be confined to just that, according to the Global Times. Wang said digital currencies can reshape monetary structures. These can include setting up “basic accounts” for all social entities on a central bank’s digital currency platform. This allows the bank to supervise digital currencies without much …