Are the Regulators and Fintech falling in love?
Here is our pick of the 3 most important Stablecoin news stories during the week:
This week we look at all of the activity in Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) and predict how it will play out.
As thought of as a first date, the Facebook/Libra and Regulators had a shocker. The in-laws (Politicians) got involved, lots of yelling and screaming, even threats were made. But now things look a little more encouraging. The new Version 2.0 of their whitepaper is a lovely bunch of flowers promising to use CBDC (or equivalent) as the basis of the Libra coin.
But from the other side what choice do Central Banks really have? They need a partner. Imagine if CBDC’s were direct from the Central Bank to you. Who would do customer care? Who would do AML/KYC? The moral hazard of Gamekeeper turned poacher as well as a massive makeover to friendly maître d’ beggars belief. It’s not going to happen. So now, in the pragmatic light of a new day, both sides realise they need each other.
- On Fintech.tv Dante Disparte, Vice-Chair and Head of Policy & Communications at Libra talks with host Lawrence Wintermeyer – Co-Founder & Principal – Elipses about their Libra white-paper 2.0 and the future of the new global payment system. LIBRA 2.0
- The Digital Dollar Project (a US think tank) backed by Accenture, proposes in a white paper Digital Dollar Project that a two tier Public/Private architecture should be adopted and proposes many worthy use cases and pilot trails.
- IMF deputy pushes for synthetic central bank digital currency – Decrypt Synthetic central bank digital currencies are neither public nor private, but both. Tommaso Mancini-Griffoli recently explained why governments should try them.
Finally, I thought it interesting to reflect that in China the Central Bank (PBoC) which is moving to launch a CDBC in the coming months has strategic partners WeChat and Alipay. Maybe they are ahead of the game and we are all going to end up in a very similar place.
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Alan Scott is an expert in the FX market and has been working in the domain of stablecoins for many years.
We have a self imposed constraint of 3 news stories per week because we serve busy senior Fintech leaders who just want succinct and important information.
For context on stablecoins please read this introductory interview with Alan “How stablecoins will change our world” and read articles tagged stablecoin in our archives.
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