Researchers Propose Blockchain for Central Banks But Bank of England Not Involved
Two London researchers have proposed a new kind of cryptocurrency for central banks, one that puts command of the network in control of a central authority while retaining a transparent, distributed ledger. First presented at the Network & Distributed System Security (NDSS) Symposium in San Diego, the RSCoin concept was developed by George Danezis and Sarah Meiklejohn of University College London. In their introductory white paper, Danezis and Meiklejohn argue that the bitcoin network suffers from a scalability problem tied to its computationally intensive mining process, by which....
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The Bank of England (BoE), the central bank of the United Kingdom has sought a digital currency of its own. A centralized, completely central-bank controlled bitcoin clone in the form of a cryptocurrency called RSCoin. While financial institutions such as securities exchanges are openly favoring and investing in blockchain technology, central banks are going a step further in borrowing from bitcoin technology. Several central banks, including the recent prominent example of the People’s Bank of China, have revealed plans of developing their own digital currency. A report in the MIT....
Despite all of the promises RScoin may hold for the Bank of England, this concept is a far cry from Bitcoin in every possible way. There is a growing interest in distributed ledger technology and digital currencies by central banks and other financial institutions all over the world. The Bank of England is looking to issue their very own digital currency – called RScoin – shortly, and has asked a team of researchers to make it happen. Centralized versions of Bitcoin are on the horizon, it seems, but can such a concept be even remotely successful? For many years now, banks and other major....
The Bank of England has proposed the introduction of a central bank backed digital currency alongside fiat banknotes. The idea of creating a central bank backed digital currency is not a new thing. The digital currency community and central banks of various nations have floated this idea at one point or another. While most nations are yet to act upon it, the Bank of England is already doing the groundwork for such an implementation. A ‘Staff Working Paper‘ published this month as part of the research commissioned by the Bank of England reports that introduction of a Bank of England backed....
The Bank of England has been one of the more aggressive central banks to investigate blockchain and distributed ledger technology, but at least one of its officials doesn’t believe widespread adoption will happen anytime soon. Andrew Hauser, the central bank’s executive director for banking, payments and financial resilience, made the remarks during a speech on the history of how the Bank of England developed its settlement systems over the past 20 years. His speech took place at the CREST Twentieth Anniversary Conference on 20th September, an event commemorating the launch of the UK-based....
In September Bitcoin Magazine reported that Andrew G. Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England (BoE), hinted at the possibility that the U.K. government might issue a digital currency. “What I think is now reasonably clear is that the distributed payment technology embodied in Bitcoin has real potential,” said Haldane. “Bitcoin’s ‘blockchain’ technology appears to offer an imaginative solution to that distributed trust problem. That is why work on central bank-issued digital currencies forms a core part of the [BoE]’s current research agenda.” Haldane left as open....