Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs, were the talk of the town for many in crypto and banking in 2020, with Sweden's prospective e-krona one of the frontrunners. Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, is investigating distributed ledger technology, or DLT, for its CBDC proof-of-concept, the bank’s deputy governor confirmed today. “The technology we use is the DLT called Corda,” Cecilia Skingsley, the deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank, said on Wednesday during a CfC St. Moritz conference panel. She did, however, decline to turn the announcement into a full-bore advertisement for Corda: “The reason we use Corda is not that …

A number of popular U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins exist on the crypto market. Stablecoins based on the euro also exist, but are notably less liquid, according to Zahreddine Touag, co-founder and head of trading at Paris-based market making firm Woorton. “There’s not any euro stablecoin that is very liquid,” Touag said on Thursday during a Paris Blockchain Week conference panel, noting multiple points of rationale. The most impactful reason: “It’s very costly to do a euro stablecoin,” he noted, adding: “The primary source of revenue for U.S. dollar coins are the interest rates when you replace the U.S. dollar because you …

Investing app Acorns aims to help people grow their savings and wealth, but how does inherent market risk factor into the equation? CEO Noah Kerner gave his thoughts on that question at a recent BlockShow panel. "We send this message to our customers: that every downturn in history has ended in an upturn,” Kerner said on Wednesday. Following a particularly difficult period in the markets roughly two years ago, Acorns sent out the same sentiment. Acorns does not offer crypto trading, but Kerner's comments should be of interest to the industry. A chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a …

Central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, will be fairly easy to convert into cryptocurrencies in the future, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes. Speaking at the Singapore Fintech Festival 2020 on Dec. 9, Buterin said that he expects a lot of ways to exchange CBDCs to cryptos like Bitcoin (BTC) as well as other digital tokens: “There’s a question of how these central bank [digital] currencies are going to interact with both crypto and digital currencies more generally. There’s going to be more digital assets of many different kinds coming over the next few decades. I expect that there will be …

As internet banking comes of age, so too do new ways of stealing funds. That makes cybersecurity central to modern banking, according to David Leach, JPMorgan Chase’s Asia-Pacific head of cybersecurity and technology controls. "It’s a competitive disadvantage not to have a robust cybersecurity capability that you can demonstrate,” Leach said during a BlockShow conference panel on Tuesday. Before the internet took over, customers mainly asked about banking and financial entities’ services, not about their security, according to panel moderator, Nasir Zubairi, CEO of the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology. Zubairi also holds experience in the banking industry. Leach said …

Although a number of big players have picked up bags of Bitcoin (BTC) in 2020, multiple aspects still avert institutions from investing on a wide scale, according to Robert Li, an analyst for Draper Dragon, a Draper Venture Network fund. “I think there are a few issues that are still holding back the majority of institutional investors from allocating capital freely toward Bitcoin,” Li said during a segment of the Latin America Bitcoin Conference on Tuesday. “Number one would be reputational issues stemming from Bitcoin’s previous association with organized crime and terrorists and online drug dealers. I think in years …

The public and private sectors should work closely together to bring about the future of money, according to a former leader of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Chris Giancarlo, a former CFTC chairman and initiator of a blockchain-based digital dollar project, joined the Singapore Fintech Festival 2020 to discuss the future of stablecoins and central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. At a Tuesday panel called “Will CBDCs disrupt stablecoins?,” Giancarlo declared that the future of money depends on close government collaboration with the private sector. Addressing Iliana Oris Valiente’s question on the potential coexistence of the emerging rise of CBDCs …

Switzerland’s principal stock exchange, SIX Swiss Exchange, and Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings have announced a joint cryptocurrency-related venture. At the Singapore Fintech Festival on Dec. 8, the firms' digital asset-related subsidiaries, SIX Digital Exchange and SBI Digital Asset Holdings, announced that they are launching a new platform in Singapore. The venture will target regulated institutional clients, implementing technologies and market expertise from both SBI and SIX. The platform will include a wide range of services like issuing, listing, trading, CSD infrastructure and custody of digital assets and cryptocurrencies, as well as regulated digital asset securities. The platform is expected …

Speaking during the Singapore Fintech Festival 2020 on Dec. 7, pioneering Bitcoin (BTC) investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss reaffirmed previous forecasts that Bitcoin’s price will eventually exceed prices of $500,000 per Bitcoin. The twins noted that their $500,000 prediction is predicated on the assumption that Bitcoin’s market cap will increase by 40 times to surpass gold’s roughly $9 trillion market cap in the future. Cameron pointed to the “tremendous amount of money-printing going on” in debt and fiat regimes, and concerns surrounding inflation as driving up demand for “hard assets” like gold and Bitcoin. Cameron states that Bitcoin offers significant …

Institutional investors will play an important role in securing the future of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), according to Erik Voorhees, CEO and founder of ShapeShift. In a panel discussion at this year’s LaBitConf, Voorhees said Bitcoin’s adoption curve will grow substantially over the next five to 10 years. In that time, Voorhees estimated that half the world could have exposure to BTC. He believes that mass adoption will occur much later, however, once Bitcoin becomes the global monetary standard. The panel was virtually unanimous in the view that Bitcoin is better served with entities of different persuasions buying and holding …

Financial authorities in Europe could form an investigation plan for a digital euro as early as next year, according to an executive at the European Central Bank. Holger Neuhaus, head of market innovation and integration at the ECB, joined the Singapore FinTech Festival 2020 on Monday to discuss the global development of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. During the online discussion, Neuhaus claimed that the ECB expects European financial authorities to assess whether to launch a digital euro initiative by mid-2021: “In mid-2021, the euro system will consider whether to launch a digital euro project. But just to highlight, …

As technology advances, personal data becomes an increasingly relevant topic. Many in the crypto industry hold sovereign finance and data privacy in high regard. Participants' best efforts may be undermined by centralized businesses and regulating bodies, however, according to Cindy Cohn. Cohn is the executive director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, a nonprofit entity focused on digital rights. Cohn joined a Web Summit panel on Thursday labeled “Internet: Who owns our data?” Pointing toward the title, she explained: “I actually think that’s the wrong question, I think the question is who controls your data.” She continued: “You already …