“Bank for Banks” Working On Prototype Crypto Asset
BIS & SNB Working On Crypto
Announced in a document published Tuesday, the Swiss National Bank and the Bank for International Settlements, the so-called “Bank for Banks”, are looking to begin work on a blockchain-based crypto asset. The document stated:
“[It] will examine the integration of digital central bank money into a distributed ledger technology infrastructure. This new form of digital central bank money would be aimed at facilitating the settlement of tokenized assets between financial institutions.
Tokens are digital assets that can be transferred from one party to another. The project will be carried out as part of a collaboration between the SNB and the SIX Group in the form of a proof of concept.”
In a separate statement issued by Swiss financial institution SIX, this project will be important in providing the local financial market with “technological insights” and will also “send an important signal to all market participants to take steps to explore DLT technology and digital assets.”
World Adopting Digital Currencies
The BIS’s move to adopt cryptocurrencies in this fashion comes as some prominent politicians have begun to push for digital asset solutions in their respective nations.
Speaking to WirtschaftsWoche, a German business newspaper, Olaf Scholz threw his weight behind a digital Euro. The German Finance Minister, who is also the vice-chancellor under Angela Merkel, said in reference to a centralized cryptocurrency for the Eurozone:
“Such a payment system would be good for the financial center Europe and its integration into the world financial system. We should not leave the field to China, Russia, the US or any private providers.”
Scholz isn’t the only prominent European politician to have seriously considered a digital Euro. France’s equivalent of Scholz, Bruno Le Maire, was reported in September that the European Union should throw its hat into the cryptocurrency ring with a “public digital currency”.
Across the pond in the United States, some American politicians have made mention of a digital dollar. Per previous reports from Ethereum World News, Congressman Warren Davidson, a Republican Representative for Ohio, recently brought up the idea of a tokenized dollar on Twitter.
And in China, PBoC deputy director Mu Changchun revealed to financial leaders in China that the digital asset’s prototype has been completed and may soon launch.
While it isn’t clear how close any of these ideas/projects are in reality, Dutch financial institution ING’s chief economist, Mark Cliffe, has said that he believes central banks will launch their own crypto assets within the “next two to three years”.
Photo by NASA on Unsplash
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