Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) could potentially find some mutually beneficial interactions with central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), according to one industry executive. While crypto is often associated with financial freedom, the concept of CBDC is frequently seen as the exact opposite. But this doesn’t mean that there cannot be a balance between the two, according to Itai Avneri, chief operating officer and deputy CEO at the crypto trading platform INX. CBDCs and regulated cryptocurrencies could potentially complement each other in the future as the two types of digital currencies have their own benefits, Avneri said in an interview with Cointelegraph …

The governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Shaktikanta Das, did not mince his words when discussing the crypto sector at a recent conference, asserting that “private” crypto will be behind the next financial crisis. Speaking at the Business Standard BFSI Insight Summit on Dec. 21, Das suggested that private crypto — those which are not issued by banks or governments — are backed by nothing and are purely tools for speculation. "They have no underlying value. They have huge inherent risks for our macro economic and financial stability. I am yet to hear any credible argument about what …

Progress continues on the creation of a digital euro, and the European Central Bank (ECB) has documented it in a second progress report that described design and distribution options recently approved by its governing council. The report considered four crucial issues, roughly in keeping with the timeline the ECB set for itself that tentatively culminates in a decision on whether to transition from the investigation to the realization phase of work in Q3 2023. The report outlined the roles of the Eurosystem and intermediaries and established that supervised intermediaries would be responsible for all management and user-facing roles in the …

The Federal Reserve’s strategy to hike interest rates may continue, making it difficult for the crypto industry to bounce back. For crypto assets to become the hedge against inflation, the industry needs to explore ways to decouple crypto from traditional markets. Decentralized finance (DeFi) can perhaps offer a way out by breaking away from legacy financial models. How Federal Reserve policies are affecting crypto In the 1980s, Paul Volcker, the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, introduced the interest hiking policy to control inflation. Volcker raised interest rates to over 20%, forcing the economy into a recession by reducing people’s …

Kazakhstan, the world’s third-largest Bitcoin (BTC) mining hub after the United States and China, found feasibility in launching its in-house central bank digital currency (CBDC), a digital tenge. The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) revealed the finding following the completion of the second phase of testing. In late October, Binance CEO Changpeng' CZ' Zhao announced that Kazakhstan's CBDC would be integrated with BNB Chain, a blockchain built by the crypto exchange. The country's primary motivation for conducting studies on CBDC was to test its potential to improve financial inclusion, promote competition and innovation in the payments industry and increase the …

A global standard for banks' exposure to crypto assets has been endorsed by the Group of Central Bank Governors and Heads of Supervision (GHOS) of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The standard, which sets a limit of 2% on crypto reserves among banks, must be implemented on January 1, 2025, according to an official announcement on Dec. 16. The report, dubbed "Prudential treatment of cryptoasset exposures", introduces the final standard structure for banks regarding exposure to digital assets, including tonenized traditional assets, stablecoins and unbacked cryptocurrencies, as well as feedback from stakeholders collected in a consultation launched in June. …

Crypto markets threw a nice head fake this week by rallying into resistance on a “positive” Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, before retracing the majority of those gains right after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell took on a surprisingly hawkish tone during his post-rate-hike presser. The Fed hiked interest rates by 0.50%, which was well within the expectation of most market participants, but the eyebrow-raiser was the Federal Open Market Committee consensus that rates would need to reach the 5%–5.5%+ range in order to hopefully achieve the Fed’s 2% inflation target. This basically threw cold water on traders’ lusty dreams …

The central bank of the Netherlands, De Nederlandsche Bank, has issued a warning to investors in KuCoin, saying the exchange was operating without legal registration. In a Dec. 15 announcement, the central bank said MEK Global Limited, or MGL, which does business in the Netherlands as KuCoin, was not in compliance with the country’s anti-money laundering, or AML, and the equivalent of combatting the financing of terrorism, or CFT, regulations. De Nederlandsche Bank added the crypto firm was “illegally offering services” as well as “illegally offering custodian wallets” for users. “Customers of MGL are not in violation,” said the bank. …

On Dec. 14, Bitcoin (BTC) price hit a 1-month high and saw a brief resurgence in bullish momentum, but the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) hawkish report and comments from Fed chair Jerome Powell sent BTC to an intraday low at $17,659. Stocks and Bitcoin started the day slightly up but quickly retracted on the FOMC report. To date, Bitcoin price remains closely correlated to equities and a majority of investors have concerns about the impact of further rate increases in the future. Rising interest rates and hawkish talk from Powell impact BTC price While the Consumer Price …

The Bank of England (BOE) is seeking a “proof of concept” for a wallet that will be able to hold a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). On Dec. 9, the BOE posted a request for applications on the United Kingdom government's Digital Marketplace, a service where government organizations can solicit work for digital projects. Simple guidelines for what the proof-of-concept wallet would have to achieve were outlined, with the wallet seemingly only needing to offer basic functionality such as a signup process, a way to update details, and show balances and transactions amongst other requirements such as displaying notifications. Of …

Central bank digital currency (CBDC) development aims squarely at inclusion, both for the central bank in the national economy and for the people it serves. Meanwhile, the technology for cross-border payments is being developed elsewhere for the most part, according to a new report on the payments industry. The Digital Money Institute (DMI), part of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum think tank, released its third annual Future of Payments report on Dec. 8. The report was sponsored by several payments companies and crypto exchange Binance, and those companies penned sections that supplemented DMI's findings. This was the first …

Spain’s central bank, the Bank of Spain (BDE) said it intends to launch an experimental program to begin testing wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (CDBCs) and is seeking collaboration proposals from local finance and technology institutions. The bank will focus on three main areas with the program that seeks to simulate the movement of funds, experiment with the liquidation of financial assets, and analyze the benefits and drawbacks of introducing a wholesale CBDC to its current processes and infrastructure according to a translated Dec. 5 statement. A wholesale CBDC refers to a digital currency typically for use by banks to …