While Japan’s CBDC plans are still in the research stage, Shinichi Uchida, an executive of the Bank of Japan (BOJ), has said simplicity will drive the central bank’s design thesis for the digital yen. According to Reuters, Uchida made this known during a speech delivered on Friday calling for modalities to be put in place to ensure the CBDC co-exists with existing private payment channels. For Uchida, vertical integration of the digital yen within the private sector payment matrix will require a simple CBDC design. Part of this simple design could involve creating a framework for people to use both …

President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador said the country was unlikely to follow in El Salvador’s footsteps by adopting cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin as legal tender alongside fiat. In a Thursday press conference, Obrador, also known as AMLO, said Mexico “must maintain orthodoxy” in its financial management and would not be changing its position on crypto. The Bank of Mexico and the National Banking and Securities Commission issued a statement in June warning that financial institutions were “not authorized to carry out and offer to the public operations with virtual assets,” but the president has not often spoken directly on …

The Digital Pound Foundation (DPF), a group of technology, innovation and regulatory experts, has announced its launch as an independent non-profit organization in the United Kingdom. According to a release issued on Thursday, the DPF will work to promote the implementation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the country. Indeed, as previously reported by Cointelegraph, the U.K. government established a CBDC task force to explore preliminary matters related to the creation of a national digital currency in April. The DPF, as part of its stated mandate, will carry out research and collaborate with stakeholders to support the U.K.’s …

Financial services company MoneyGram International has partnered with the Stellar Development Foundation to enable consumers to send money using Circle’s popular stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC), and convert directly to and from fiat. Per a Wednesday announcement, MoneyGram has integrated support allowing crypto wallets connected to the Stellar Network to access its global retail platform. Working alongside Circle, MoneyGram will also enable “near-instant backend settlement,” account funding and local fiat withdrawals using the USDC stable token. United Texas Bank will act as the settlement bank to complete the process within the regulatory framework. “As crypto and digital currencies rise in prominence, …

International Monetary Fund, or IMF, managing director Kristalina Georgieva said more than half of all central banks in the world are exploring how to launch digital currencies. Speaking at a virtual conference hosted by Bocconi University on Oct. 5, Georgieva said the IMF was looking at central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, and digital currencies as a whole from the perspective of macroeconomic stability. She said the technology had given people the opportunity to make “seamless, and less costly” transfers, and called CBDCs the most reliable form of digital currency, given they had “backing of the state” and were generally …

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) published an issue paper providing its perspective on central bank digital currencies (CBDC). The paper outlines CBDC purposes, designs, as well as the potential benefits and associated risks. The bank will be seeking comments on the proposed paper until Dec. 6. The document focuses on a “general-purpose” CBDC that is a digital currency issued to “any individual or business that wants to use it.” “Such a ‘general-purpose’ CBDC would be closer in function to cash and better placed to fulfil the role of central bank money than a ‘wholesale’ CBDC,” RBNZ wrote. The …

The National Bank of Ukraine, the country’s chief monetary authority, has recently taken to professional social network LinkedIn to promote its blockchain developer job opening. The ad was published by the director of NBU’s IT department, Vladimir Nagornyuk. The ad goes on to list “development, implementation and modification of infrastructure services […] and distributed systems” among the prospective employee’s duties, in addition to mentioning smart contracts and Hyperledger competencies among the requirements for the job. The central bank’s interest in blockchain hires adds to other recent news coming out of Ukraine’s CBDC project, the e-hryvnia. Last week, speaking at a …

“Sooner or later, ETH will outpace Bitcoin and become the global standard,” said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. Nailwal believes that Ethereum will eventually become "the ultimate settlement layer" for the decentralized finance, or DeFi, space. Polygon will play a major role in ensuring the long-term success of Ethereum through its scalability solution. Despite increasing competition from other layer-one protocols, such as Solana, Nailwal believes it is still too early to talk about an “Ethereum killer.” “The Ethereum chain, because of its fundamentals, security, the level of decentralization, and the community and the trust that …

Crypto payments are becoming increasingly popular as Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets continue to go mainstream. This has become the case for both crypto holders and non-crypto owners who are primarily interested in the concept of using cryptocurrencies for payments. Recent data has found that 93% of crypto users surveyed would consider making purchases in crypto. The report further revealed that 59% of consumers who don’t hold crypto would be interested in using it to make purchases in the future. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that major payment providers like Mastercard have been ramping up their …

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has published a report touting the benefits of central bank digital currencies (CBDC), especially in reducing the cost of cross-border payments. According to the report titled “Inthanon-LionRock to mBridge: Building a multi CBDC platform for international payments” published on Tuesday, CBDCs can reduce the transaction throughput of cross-border payments from three to five business days to only a few seconds. The stated claim is part of the conclusions drawn from phase two of Project Inthanon-LionRock involving the central banks of China, the United Arab Emirates and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. “The prototype demonstrates …

Stablecoins have emerged as significant players in the crypto market this year, driven by user demand for flexible liquidity in fiat currency times. These currencies are defined as a type of digital currency that can be pegged to underlying real-world assets or backed by them. These assets can be anything from fiat money, commodities like gold or silver, or even another cryptocurrency. As their name suggests, stablecoins are designed to have a value that stays (rather) stable like cash, a contrast to the volatility common in cryptocurrency trading today. To further illustrate this scenario, a typical fiat-backed stablecoin might involve …

The Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey (CBRT) has made a major step forward with a research and development project that could see the Turkish lira go digital. On Wednesday, CBRT announced the signing of memoranda of understanding with three domestic research and technology companies that will form the “Digital Turkish Lira Collaboration Platform.” The pool of participants is expected to expand as the project moves forward. The three original technology stakeholders are Aselsan, a major defense corporation, Havelsan, a software and systems developer operating in the defense and IT sectors, and TÜBİTAK Informatics and Information Security Research Center. …