CBDC exploration organized by a group of central banks

Central bank group organized for CBDC exploration

Several central banks have announced the formation of an official group to evaluate potential cases of use of central bank digital currencies (CBDC).

The new group will explore how emerging technologies can affect cross-border transactions and other functions of central banks. The group will be led by Benoit Coeure, a member of the Board of Directors of the European Central Bank, the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Jon Cunliffe, and a representative of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

The participating central banks are the Bank of Canada, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank, Sveriges Riksbank and the Swiss National Bank.

According to the announcement:

“The group will deal with CBDC exploration and evaluate CBDC use cases; economic, functional and technical design choices, including cross-border interoperability; and the exchange of knowledge about emerging technologies. It will coordinate closely with relevant institutions and forums – in particular the Financial Stability Board and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure (CPMI). “

Silvergate bank is a former Blockstream director

Silvergate Bank made the first commitment from the crypto community to the digital assets department. This is Benjamin Richman, former director of business development and partnerships at the Blockstream bitcoin technology start-up.

The decision shows the bank’s commitment to expand its services in the blockchain industry by 2020, a niche that most banks are unaware of.

Earlier this month, Silvergate Bank launched a loan product that allows traders to use bitcoin as collateral for fiat loans. The bank also applied for a license from NYDFS to provide custody and settlement for cryptocurrencies.

Square obtains a patent for the crypto-fiat payment system

Square payment provider has won an American patent for a network that allows instant crypto-fiat transactions. The payment system allows users to have different types of assets to trade with each other in real time.

“The current technology allows a first party to pay in any currency, while allowing the second party to be paid in any currency,”

is shown in the Square patent.

The conversion is performed automatically and instantaneously by the network. This makes the system particularly advantageous for the retail sector.

The patent suggests that the system could be expanded to add support for other asset classes, including securities, derivatives or loans.

Controversial financing plan for Bitcoin Cash developers

The miners in the Bitcoin Cash network seem to prepare a plan to finance the development of the protocol using block rewards. The controversial plan states that 12.5% ​​of the mined BCH will be used as a developer fund.

The proposal was posted on Medium by BTC.Top mining pool director Jiang Zhuoer, and signed by Jihan Wu of Antpool and BTC.com, Haipo Yang of ViaBTC and Roger Ver of Bitcoin.com.

The controversial aspect is that blocks discovered by miners who do not wish to participate will be removed:

“To ensure participation and include grants from the SHA-256 mining assembly, miners will ignore BCH blocks that do not comply with the plan.”

is mentioned in the post.

Bitcoin supporter, WhalePanda, commented that the level of centralization required to implement such is the equivalent of a “totalitarian regime”. He pointed out that the Bitcoin Cash network is vulnerable to a 51% attack in the context in which miners cooperate in this way.