The Bank of England’s regulatory arm has raised its budget by $31.6 million, or 24.3 million Great British pounds, for the coming financial year. It said that costs have increased due to its growing responsibilities and preparations for “emerging risks in the financial system.” According to the latest business plan released on Wednesday by the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), its budget for the 2022/23 financial year is $418 million, or 320.9 million pounds, an 8.2% increase from last year. The PRA chief executive Sam Woods outlined its plan for the year ahead saying it was: “Committed to keeping pace with …

European Central Bank executive board member Fabio Panetta provided an overview of the central bank’s current research on a retail central bank digital currency Friday when he spoke at the IESE Business School Banking Initiative Conference on Technology and Finance. Panetta said the issuance of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, is “likely to become a necessity,” but warned that “they should not become a source of financial disruption that could impair the transmission of monetary policy in the euro area.” A key to maintaining financial stability during the introduction of digital currency, Panetta said, would be to give commercial …

South Africa has taken another step closer to implementing its central bank digital currency (CBDC) as the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) concludes a technical proof-of-concept for the project. The project, titled Project Khokha 2 (PK2), is the second phase of SARB’s Project Khokha (PK1), launched in 2018. It experimented with distributed ledger technology (DLT) for interbank payments' settlement, successfully replicating the banks’ “SAMOS” real-time gross settlement system. This second phase, PK2 was launched in February 2021 and tested DLT with clearing, trading and settlement within the proof-of-concept environment with industry participants Absa, FirstRand, JSE Limited, Nedbank and Standard Bank …

The Swedish central bank’s digital currency project, a proposed CBDC known as the e-krona, has successfully finished its second phase of trials. According to Riksbank, the nation's central bank, the asset is now technically ready to be integrated into banking networks and to facilitate transactions. During the second phase of the e-krona pilot project — which began in February 2021 — the CBDC was investigated on the matter of its technical ability to function within the country’s existing digital banking infrastructure. Participating banks included Handelsbanken and Tietoevry. The report indicated that the e-krona could indeed be successfully exchanged for fiat …

Bitcoin (BTC) continued its downturn into Wednesday's Wall Street open with its first test of $44,000 since the start of April. BTC price posts near two-week lows Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD reaching 12-day lows of $43,801 on Bitstamp, down over 7% from the month's high. The move defied positive triggers in the form of fresh buy-ins from MicroStrategy and Terra, but analysts were instead eyeing macro factors as the next potential BTC price booster. Jeroen Blokland, portfolio manager at asset manager Robeco, said that the United States 10-year treasury yield, on an uptrend throughout the …

Georgia, the country on the Black Sea, is preparing to regulate its cryptocurrency market. National Bank of Georgia Governor Koba Gvenetadze told The Financial on Monday that the central bank has already developed draft regulatory legislation in accordance with the requirements of international agencies. Gvenetadze said the size of the Georgian crypto market is unknown, due to the lack of regulation. However an estimate by Moneyval, the Council of Europe money laundering monitoring body, placed its monthly transaction volume at between 3.5 million and 5 million Georgian lari, or $1.09 million to $1.64 million USD, monthly as of September 2020. …

More than 80% of central banks are interested in launching a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) or have already done so according to research conducted by accounting firm PwC. The second annual Global CBDC Index report released on Monday, April 4, measures a central bank's level of maturity in deploying its own digital currency. The report also included an overview of stablecoins for the first time. Haydn Jones, Blockchain and Crypto Specialist at PwC U.K. stated in the report that “over 80% of central banks are considering launching a CBDC or have already done so.” The report ranks both retail …

Alex Gladstein, the CSO at the Human Rights Foundation, says that if Bitcoin was adopted as a global reserve currency, nation-states would be less incentivized to start wars. According to Gladstein, the U.S. was able to sustain its "forever wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan mainly by borrowing capital. That was possible largely because of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy, which has been keeping interest rates relatively low through quantitative easing. "We literally print money, we sell bonds to the open market for a promise to pay in the future and we use the income from the bond sales to pay …

The Central Bank of Sudan (CBOS) cautioned the country’s citizens against dealing with “all types of cryptocurrencies” due to “the high risks” that they pose. This announcement came as a reaction to the increasing interest in digital assets among the country’s population, which has been facing three-digit inflation rates since the 2021 military coup. On March 27, the Sudan News Agency (SUNA) published a short announcement from the CBOS declaring that due to high risks, which include “financial crimes, electronic piracy and the risk of losing their value,” citizens are not advised to use cryptocurrencies of any sort. The CBOS …

Le Minh Khai, the deputy prime minister of Vietnam has issued a notification to the finance ministry, asking them to explore and amend laws to build a legal framework for the digital asset market. In a notice dated March 23, the Deputy PM has instructed the Ministry of Finance to assume the prime responsibility for developing the legal framework for the crypto market. The reported list of instructions includes identifying specific legal documents that need to be amended or supplemented. The Finance ministry would subsequently work alongside the ministry of Justice, Information and Communications and the State Bank of Vietnam …

Austria has been actively transforming into an attractive location for providers of blockchain-based products, with the government itself experimenting with the technology and trying to create a legal basis upon which companies can use it. With regard to blockchain-based applications in the economy, however, Austria is still in the experimental phase, with most firms still running pilot projects. Still, politicians and economists alike see potential for select industries. Public administration reform via blockchain The Austrian government is quite open to blockchain innovations, cryptocurrencies aside, and has supported various projects in the public and private sectors. In 2019, a consortium of …

The Central Bank of Jamacia recently announced that it would be launching its central bank digital currency (CBDC), dubbed the Jamaican Digital Exchange, or Jam-Dex, in the first quarter of 2022. According to the Jamaican government, the national digital currency will help to lower transaction costs while allowing the unbanked to access financial services. It is estimated that over 17% of Jamaicans are unbanked, but it is feared that many more are underbanked. This is largely due to systemic financial sector impediments. High transaction costs, in particular, are a huge limitation. Consequently, many Jamaicans believe that banks are a preserve …