The head of the United Kingdom’s central bank has said Facebook’s new libra cryptocurrency could have genuine use cases if it can conform to regulatory demands, the Financial Times (FT) reported on June 18. Speaking at a conference of central bankers in Portugal, Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England (BoE), delivered mixed reviews of libra. The in-house stablecoin for Facebook has sparked predictions of blanket bans by governments since developers unveiled it this week. “The governor said the BoE was there to guarantee financial and monetary stability and would look at Facebook’s proposals ‘very closely and in a …

Huw van Steenis, senior adviser to Bank of England’s (BOE) Governor Mark Carney, told Bloomberg in an interview Monday, Jan. 21, that cryptocurrencies fail fundamental financial tests. Van Steenis joined BOE in 2018, having previously worked at Schroders and Morgan Stanley. He is currently heading a review of the future of finance, according to Bloomberg. When asked about crypto’s potential to become a threat to economic stability, van Steenis said: “I’m not so worried about cryptocurrencies. They fail the basic tests of financial services. They’re not a great unit of exchange, they don’t hold value, and they’re slower.” Van Steenis …

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 …

The U.K. Cryptoassets Taskforce has released a report Oct. 29 that proposes some changes for cryptocurrency regulation and raises concerns over how digital assets are traded and used. Launched in March, the Cryptoassets Taskforce is made up of of the Bank of England (BOE) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and is charged to regulate and support crypto technologies. Since there is no widely agreed definition of a cryptoasset and given that cryptoassets significantly vary in the rights they provide to their holders, the Taskforce has developed a framework that considers three types of cryptoassets. Those include cryptoassets used as …

A Bank of England deputy governor has written a letter of warning Thursday, June 28, to CEOs of financial institutions about the risks of exposure to crypto assets. Sam Woods, the Deputy Governor and CEO of Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), began the letter by reminding the institutions of their obligations to PRA rules, including acting in a prudent manner, having effective risk management systems and strategies, and cooperating with regulators. Wood notes that crypto-asset market products have “grown quickly” and “exhibited high price volatility and relative illiquidity” in their “short history,” leading to concerns about their vulnerability to fraud, manipulation, …

The Bank of England is planning to rebuild its Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system so that it can interface with private business and platforms using distributed ledger technology (DLT), the bank’s Governor Mark Carney announced in a speech June 21. Speaking at Mansion House in London, Carney said that the bank will conduct an “ambitious rebuild” of its RTGS system, which is, according to him, the backbone of every payment in the U.K. RTGS is a system generally used to transfer large volumes of funds between banks. The bank is looking to reorganize the existing RTGS so that private …

The former Chair of the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said that she thinks the Federal Reserve (Fed) needs to seriously consider issuing a central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC) in a June 8 op-ed published on Yahoo! Finance. In her op-ed, the former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair noted that “the past 10 years are proof positive that current monetary tools are woefully inadequate to stimulate broad-based economic growth,” adding: “The super rich have gotten a lot richer, while the middle class has struggled.” Bair first crosses out cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) as a way to improve current monetary tools, …

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 …

1. Bank of England Issues a Report on Cryptocurrencies Carlo Caraluzzo reported last Sunday that while the Bank of England’s report on digital currencies demonstrated a grasp of the technology’s potential, it fell short in other respects or perhaps outright made up its facts. “The fact is however that the Bank’s report either accidentally or intentionally ignored a great deal of evidence that indicates the exact opposite of their findings and they completely ignored international impact. In actuality, the report seems more like a piece of candy to make the Board feel better than an honest assessment of digital currencies …