Tag: cbdc

State Sponsored Money – Under Pressure?

~ antonylewis2015 ~ 1 Comment

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) is now throwing their weight behind Central Bank Digital Currencies for household use (“Retail CBDCs”). For clarity, this doesn’t necessarily mean recording fiat currency as tokens on blockchains: regular account-based technology can also be used. But it means that households could store and spend fiat money digitally outside of a bank or other private sector company.

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Blockchains and Central Banks – What Have We Learnt?

~ antonylewis2015 ~ Leave a comment

This article was first posted on r3.com

Over the past couple of years, R3 has worked closely with a number of central banks to explore if distributed ledgers could support their policy goals, and I have had the privilege to participate in a number of these projects.

What have we learnt?  What is important?  What do central banks care about?  While I can’t speak directly for individual organisations, I have collated my own thoughts, and wanted to share these ahead of the Singapore FinTech Festival this year (13-17 Nov) when the results of Singapore’s “Project Ubin” experiments will be announced.

Update (post FinTech Festival): Read about the Open Sourcing of “Corda for Central Banks“!

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The hype around central banks, digital currencies, and blockchains

~ antonylewis2015 ~ 1 Comment
Central banks and blockchain

There has been a lot of hype around central banks, interbank payments, blockchains, and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), but the narrative has become confusing and often misses the point.  What’s going on?  Actually two independent things are being actively explored:

  1. Decentralisation of interbank payment systems
  2. Wider access to digital central bank money (Central Bank Digital Currencies – CBDCs)

I aim to explain them both in this post.

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