ACI is Steadily Paving the Way for Central Bank Blockchains
What will it look like when central banks are on the blockchain? ACI is hard at work modeling an answer to this question. The international payments firm already enables more than 5,000 credit unions, processors and banks to transact $14tn daily through its suite of software-as-a-service tools, and now it's seeking to uncover how blockchain could play a role in its delivery. Constructed on a five-node network that runs on servers in Omaha, Nebraska, and Norcross, Georgia, ACI has built a blockchain proof-of-concept specifically designed to simulate how a central bank and four financial....
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A new research paper published by South Africa’s FirstRand Bank explores the world of central banks and blockchains, suggesting that the technology could usher in a "new epoch" of monetary oversight. Titled “The Advent of Crypto Banking”, the report examines the question of central bank-issued digital currencies, a topic that recently came to the fore when the European Central Bank announced this week that it was jointly exploring the concept in partnership with Japan’s central bank, the Bank of Japan. Those two institutions are expected to publish research of their own next....
Bitcoin and Blockchain are technologies which have the potential to dramatically change the world. If Blockchain technology is deployed rapidly and effectively, we can bank the unbanked, automate contracts and even get Blockchains to work with the Internet of Things (IOT) to create a Blockchain of Things. Yet the primary use of Blockchains remains as a medium to validate cryptocurrency transactions. If that is the case, one must ask the question, how soon before central banks not only accept Blockchain but also start to have more acceptance of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies? After all....
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has urged her country to be ready for emerging fintech by paving the way for cryptocurrencies. She also urged the country’s central bank to begin the necessary preparations for a step-change in global attitudes towards banking. However, in her address of the Tanzanian finance chiefs, Hassan acknowledges that not everyone in the country is embracing crypto. The 61-year-old leader still wants them to plan ahead. She said: I know that throughout the nation, including Tanzania, they have not accepted or started using these routes. However, my call....
The European Central Bank is finally launching its major quantitative easing (QE) in order to fight the euro zone’s slide towards deflation. But with the evident failure of this monetary policy so far and the emergence of negative interest rates, is the ECB creating the perfect storm for virtual currencies as a viable alternative? From March this year until September 2016 the ECB will buy €60 billion (US$68 billion) of assets a month, a total of €1.1 trillion over the given period. Moreover, the President of the ECB, Mario Draghi, left room to extend the program if necessary. The ECB has....
The central bank of the Netherlands is preparing an ambitious experiment aimed at discerning if an entire financial market can be built on a blockchain. While many so-called smart contract applications of blockchains can be replicated using existing technology, the man in charge of a series of experiments conducted by De Nederlandsche Bank says the distributed nature of blockchains could lead to entirely re-imagined financial market infrastructures (FMIs), ones that are much more difficult to hack. Like the bitcoin network itself, the experiment envisions how an FMI's internal operations....