The demand for cryptocurrency exceeded PayPal’s initial expectations after the firm launched crypto trading in late 2020, according to the company’s CEO. “Demand on the crypto side has been multiple-fold to what we initially expected. There’s a lot of excitement,” PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman said in a Sunday interview with Time magazine. Schulman said that existing financial infrastructure needs modernization because it’s “inefficient today” due to overly expensive, slow international transactions. The CEO predicted that the financial system is poised to see more changes in the next five to 10 years than it has experienced over the past …

As central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, continue to garner mainstream traction across the global financial landscape in recent years, almost all central banks are actively researching the benefits and risks of offering a digital currency to the public. In its most basic sense, a CBDC is a digital form of fiat money, backed by a suitable amount of monetary reserves like gold or foreign currency reserves. Each CBDC unit acts as a secure digital instrument equivalent and can be used as a way of payment, a store of value and an official unit of account. What distinguishes them from …

The Norwegian central bank, Norges Bank, is set to test various technical solutions for a central bank digital currency following years of research. Norges Bank officially announced Friday that it will be conducting CBDC tests over the next two years upon recommendations from an internal working group. “The working group is of the opinion that the motivation for research into CBDCs has been strengthened. Many central banks are in the process of carrying out similar research, and several are already under way with technical testing,” the central bank stated. According to the announcement, Norges Bank has been involved in CBDC …

Beijing’s bid to better control money laundering and illicit transactions through a fully traceable central bank digital currency could pose a threat to the country’s popular gambling hub Macau. A hotspot for tourists — of which 70% come from mainland China — the region’s gambling business could reportedly be adversely impacted by China’s use of a digital yuan to clamp down on illegal money flows and keep its capital account better sealed. Revenues from Macau’s casino junkets — the longtime beneficiaries of Macau’s position as the only administrative region in China where gambling is legal — had already been squeezed …

The United Kingdom Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the launch of a CBDC task force this week, bringing together the Bank of England and Her Majesty’s Treasury to coordinate the exploration of a potential central bank digital currency. Depending on the feedback received from various areas of industry, academia, and civil society, the task force will advise the Bank of England on the future rollout (or not) of what would be a digital version of the pound. Antony Welfare, executive director of enterprise at NEM, is a member of the Whitechapel Think Tank and the Finance Payments Working Group, both …

A new ranking of global central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, places the Bahamas at the top of the leaderboard in terms of retail applications — offering an important glimpse in the race to issue government-backed cryptocurrencies. In its 2021 "CBDC global index," consulting firm PwC surveyed the level of central-bank maturity in deploying cryptocurrencies based on two factors: retail applications and interbank applications. Retail applications refer to CBDCs that can be held and transacted directly by individuals and companies in the form of digital cash. Interbank, or wholesale, CBDCs, meanwhile, are restricted to major financial institutions for settlement. “More …

China’s central bank is looking to enable foreign athletes and visitors to use the country’s digital currency during the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, according to a top central bank official. Li Bo, deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, said that the upcoming Winter Olympics could potentially become the first test of China’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC, by foreign users. “For the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, we were trying to make e-CNY available not only to domestic users, but also to international athletes and like visitors,” Li said Sunday at a CNBC panel at the Boao …

Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Bank of England have begun preliminary central bank digital currency studies that could result in the creation of a national digital currency. In a document published by HM Treasury, the exchequer announced the creation of a CBDC task force in collaboration with the United Kingdom’s central bank. Sir Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor of the Bank of England, and Katharine Braddick, director general of financial services at HM Treasury, will co-chair the task force. According to the terms of reference document, the task force will synergize the efforts of all relevant statutory bodies in the U.K. …

Over the last couple of years, we have seen a lot of interest from central banks and governments in the stablecoin market. The reason behind it lies in the development of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. The idea of issuing a digital alternative to cash is a great motivator for central banks. It allows them to gain more control over the transition and processing of cashless transactions, which are currently overseen indirectly through private payment processors and banks. Related: Did CBDCs affect the crypto space in 2020, and what’s next in 2021? Experts answer There have been a number …

Ever since the publication of Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper back in November 2008, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” the term “blockchain” has been synonymous with digital currencies in the sense of the underlying technology that allows for the transfer of value, peer-to-peer. What’s interesting is that the term “blockchain” is not used once in that white paper. The purpose of the paper was to propose a solution to the core issue of double-spending a digital currency, which is the representation of a transfer of value directly between transacting parties, without the use of a central trusted third party. Currencies …

The European Central Bank will put itself in jeopardy if it waits around o a digital euro for too long, according to an executive at major cryptocurrency firm ConsenSys. ConsenSys South Africa lead Monica Singer joined the European Blockchain Convention to discuss the role of the private sector in shaping global central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. She spoke of CBDC-powered benefits and opportunities in a Monday panel with BNP Paribas CIB digital transformation leader Dean Demellweek and Philipp Sandner, a professor at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center. Singer — who served more than 18 years as CEO of South …

Lamido Yuguda, the director-general of Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission has said the central bank’s crypto ban has caused significant disruptions to the market. According to a report by The Guardian, the SEC director-general made this assertion known during a press conference organized after the meeting of the Capital Market Committee on Thursday. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, the Central Bank of Nigeria barred commercial banks from servicing crypto exchanges back in February. According to Yuguda, the commission has been forced to pause its planned cryptocurrency regulatory framework announced in September 2020. The SEC director-general also maintained that the suspension …