After completing the first phase of its digital currency pilot project, Sveriges Riksbank has found some critical issues that must be addressed before Stockholmers can buy coffee and kanelbullar with e-krona. In a recent study, Sweden’s central bank presented the first results of its central bank digital currency pilot on a network based on R3’s Corda blockchain. The Riksbank simulated core aspects of a potential CBDC system, including liquidity supply via the Riksbank’s settlement system, RIX, and network members serving as e-kronor distributors. The central bank also simulated participants, end-users and payment instruments like mobile apps. The Riksbank said that …
Sweden’s central bank, the Riksbank, recently announced that it has extended an ongoing pilot aimed at creating a digital version of the Swedish krona until 2022. In combination with professional services firm Accenture, the “e-krona” pilot program was created to address what the Riksbank sees as “the marginalization of cash”: “The Riksbank sees potential problems with the marginalisation of cash and has therefore initiated a pilot project to develop a proposal for a technical solution for a central bank digital currency, an e-krona that can work as a complement to cash." The recent announcement states that no decision has been …
The Swedish central bank’s digital currency project, a proposed CBDC known as the e-krona, has successfully finished its second phase of trials. According to Riksbank, the nation's central bank, the asset is now technically ready to be integrated into banking networks and to facilitate transactions. During the second phase of the e-krona pilot project — which began in February 2021 — the CBDC was investigated on the matter of its technical ability to function within the country’s existing digital banking infrastructure. Participating banks included Handelsbanken and Tietoevry. The report indicated that the e-krona could indeed be successfully exchanged for fiat …
The dichotomy between centralization and decentralization in human history seems to be opposing forces gradually overcoming or being overcome by each other. And while one replaces the other, people are justifying both, finding philosophical or theoretical reasons for the existence of both of them. Centralization In the middle of the 17th century, British philosopher Thomas Hobbes published a book titled Leviathan (or, The Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil), where he formulates social contract theory. According to Hobbes, roughly simplified for this article, humans started from a summum malum — greatest evil — or a constant …
Blockchain, the underlying technology of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), is not the right solution for a central bank digital currency, according to an economist at Switzerland’s central bank. Carlos Lenz, chief economist at the Swiss National Bank, argued that blockchain-based decentralization features are not efficient for a state-controlled digital currencies like a digital franc, German-language Swiss newspaper The Handelszeitung reported Thursday. The economist reportedly noted that there is a large number of technological opportunities for building a digital franc. “One could imagine a direct account with the National Bank. Not that we want to do that, but that would be …