Canada doesn’t want any "surprises" regarding central bank digital currencies. In a recent interview with Reuters, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem doubled down on the country's contingency-plan approach to CBDCs, stressing that he sees no urgent need to issue one right now. For Macklem, inter-state competition and coordination remains the key question when it comes to CBDC issuance. He told reporters: “If another country has one and we don’t, that could certainly create some problems. So we want to make sure we’re ready. Currencies move across borders, and so we certainly wouldn’t want to be surprised by some other …
United Kingdom cryptocurrency custodian Copper announced support for United States dollar transfers through Signature Bank’s Signet blockchain payment platform. According to an announcement on July 20, the integration of Signature Bank’s Signet will allow Copper’s customers to instantly pay and settle transactions in U.S. dollars and other fiat currencies. The integration will “vastly reduce the time and other issues that asset managers face in transferring traditional currencies” between bank accounts and trading environments. Crypto exchanges Bitstamp, Huobi, Kraken, OKCoin and LMAX are already integrated with both Signet and Copper. The collaboration is part of a broader trend Copper CEO Dmitry …
British banking giant Barclays has reportedly cut ties with United States crypto exchange Coinbase. As Coindesk reported on Aug. 13, unnamed industry sources have said that Barclays will no longer be banking for Coinbase, severing a relationship that began when Coinbase opened a Barclays account in March 2018. The news is expected to hit the crypto community hard, as, in addition to linking a major crypto exchange with a heavy hitter among the traditional banking establishment, the break may end Coinbase users’ access to the United Kingdom’s Faster Payments Scheme and slow the exchange of cryptocurrencies for British pounds sterling …
The vast majority of respondents to an ongoing United Kingdom central bank Twitter survey, posted Dec. 17, said they would prefer to receive a gift of money in digital currency. Screenshot of the Bank of England’s Twitter survey. Source: Twitter The Bank of England’s survey asks participants to choose their preferred way to receive money as a Christmas gift, showing the options cash, bank transfer, gift voucher and digital currency. At press time, 8,230 people have responded and 70 percent of them have chosen digital currency. Cash is in second place, with 21 percent of respondents indicating it as a …
Representatives from multiple central banks discussed whether or not cryptocurrency could spell the end of fiat currencies during the Money20/20 conference in Amsterdam today, June 5. During a panel talk titled “Cryptocurrency, the Central (Bank) Question”, representatives from the Swiss National Bank, the Bank of Lithuania, the Bank of England, and the Bank of Canada took turns responding to the question “Can cryptocurrencies spell the end of fiat currencies?”. Bank of Canada executive James Chapman stated that cryptocurrencies are only a threat to fiat currencies in a “situation of hyperinflation”. Thomas Moser, an alternate member of the governing board at …