Home FINANCIAL Mapping Out The Banking Elite’s Goal For A Cashless Monetary System, Part 1 Mapping Out The Banking Elite’s Goal For A Cashless Monetary System, Part 1
ER Editor: Readers may also be interested in this Reuters piece from last month titled Central banks join forces to look at future digital currencies .Of note:
LONDON/FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Major central banks are looking at the case for issuing their own digital currencies, the Bank of England and European Central Bank said on Tuesday, amid a growing debate over the future of money and who controls it.
The central banks of Britain, the euro zone, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland will share experiences in a new group headed by former European Central Bank official Benoit Coeure and assisted by the Bank of International Settlements, they said.
“The group will assess … economic, functional and technical design choices, including cross-border interoperability; and the sharing of knowledge on emerging technologies,” the central banks said in a statement.
The U.S.Federal Reserve was notably absent from the group.
Central banks across the world have quickened the pace with which they are looking at issuing their own digital currencies, also known as CBDCs.Facebook’s ( FB.O ) push to launch its Libra cryptocurrency has added fuel to questions over whether nation states will continue to control money in the decades ahead.
Of the major central banks, China’s has emerged as the frontrunner in the drive to create its own digitized money, though details of its project are still scarce.
And this from Cointelegraph : What are central bank digital currencies aka CBDCs? CBDCs are virtual currencies that are issued and controlled by a federal regulator .In contrast to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, CBDCs apparently represent fiat money in the digital form .While no global jurisdiction has launched a CBDC to date , a number of governments have been increasingly exploring and building such projects, with China reportedly preparing to issue the first real-world test of its CBDC soon.According to a new survey by the Bank of International Settlements, at least 10% of central banks are likely to issue a CBDC for the general public in the short term.
Mapping Out The Banking Elite’s Goal For A Cashless Monetary System, Part 1 STEVEN GUINNESS Back in 2014, the Bank of England became the first central bank to publish research on digital currencies through their quarterly bulletin ( Innovations in payment technologies and the emergence of digital currencies ).A leading focus was on the use of distributed ledger technology, with the research declaring that ‘ the key innovation of digital currencies is the ‘distributed ledger’ which allows a payment system to operate in an entirely decentralised way, without intermediaries such as bank s ‘.
One of the main draws of this technology is the belief that cryptocurrency and stablecoins offer a genuine route out of the traditional centralised model of banking that epitomises fiat currency.
But is bypassing central banks and being able to make and receive payments independent of these institutions really what the rise in digital currencies is all about?
Six years on from the BOE’s research, the digital currency agenda has advanced significantly in the face of increased geopolitical instability.An area of interest that has garnered scant attention is the ‘ utility settlement coin ‘ (USC) project that several global banks have been heavily invested in .It is a project that has now evolved through the inception of Fnality International, a consortium of shareholders that includes UBS, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group.
Here is a breakdown of some of the key events which have taken place in regards to USC since the BOE’s research was published: 2015
In September of 2015 a partnership consisting of Swiss bank UBS and UK based blockchain firm Clearmatics was announced that officially launched the concept of a Utility Settlement Coin.As detailed by Bitcoin Magazine , USC would be utilised for ‘ post-trade settlements between financial institutions on private financial platforms built on blockchain technology .’
With blockchain underpinning the foundations of USC, payments would be settled in a matter of seconds rather than days.It would operate using a ‘ permissioned ‘ blockchain network , meaning access to the network must be granted by participants.This is in contrast to the likes of Bitcoin, which uses a permissionless network that anyone can access.
As discussed in previous articles, central banks openly advocate permissioned blockchain for the future development of digital currencies.
2016
A year on from the original announcement on USC, Santander, BNY Mellon and Deutsche Bank all issued press releases to confirm that they had gone into partnership with UBS and Clearmatics to develop the Utility Settlement Coin.
Reacting to the news, Julio Faura, head of Blockchain R&D at Santander, said:
Recent discussion of digital currencies by central banks and regulators has confirmed their potential significance.
The USC is an essential step towards a future financial market on distributed ledger technologies.
Expanding on the definition of USC, Deutsche Bank’s press release stated:
USC is an asset-backed digital cash instrument implemented on distributed ledger technology for use within global institutional financial markets.USC is a series of cash assets, with a version for each of the major currencies (USD, EUR, GBP, CHF, etc.) and USC is convertible at parity with a bank deposit in the corresponding currency.USC is fully backed by cash assets held at a central bank.
The Financial Times quoted David Treat , head of Accenture’s capital markets blockchain practice, as saying the technology behind USC would be ‘ three to five years before we get things adopted at scale and several more years before it goes mainstream .’ 2017
Exactly twelve months after Santander, BNY Mellon and Deutsche Bank announced their involvement in USC, more banks came on board in the shape of Barclays, Credit Suisse, HSBC, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC), Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG) and State Street.
It was here where links were made between USC and the future development of central bank digital currencies.Speaking to CoinDesk , Hyder Jaffrey, the director of strategic investment and fintech innovation at UBS, said:
It may well inform the way central banks choose to move things forward.
We see it as a stepping stone to a future where central banks issue their own [cryptocurrency] at some point.
Head of fintech partnerships and strategy at HSBC, Kaushalya Somasundaram, added to Jaffrey’s comments:
It is a very good step forward in terms of going for more ambitious projects such as central bank digital currencies in the future.
In September of 2017, the Bank for International Settlements released their quarterly review that contained a section titled, ‘ Central bank cryptocurrencies ‘.It was here where the BIS presented an illustration called ‘ The Money Flower: a taxonomy of money ‘, which consisted of a mix of universally accessible money, electronic money, central bank issued money and peer to peer transactions.Located in the middle of the flower was the Utility Settlement Coin, this despite how relatively under advanced the venture was at the time.The review did not present any details for why USC was included, other than to reaffirm the definition of the term by linking to a press release issued by UBS in August 2016.
Nonetheless, for the BIS to take notice of USC shows that the technology was being actively considered at the highest levels of central banking.
2019
With the USC project progressing, in February 2019 JP Morgan announced that they had become the first U.S.
bank to create and test a digital coin (known as JPM Coin ).Characterised as a stablecoin, the JPM Coin is underpinned by blockchain technology and runs on a permissioned blockchain network.For the time being, it is restricted to ‘ institutional clients ‘ only.
As with other stablecoins, the value of one JPM Coin is equivalent to one U.S.Dollar, but the plan is to extend the use of the coin beyond the dollar and encompass other leading currencies around the world.
Far from being averse to the technology, JP Morgan are fully behind cryptocurrencies, provided they are ‘ properly controlled and regulated .’
A few months later and the first soundings began to emerge of the Utility Settlement Coin entering a new phase of development.In May, Reuters reported that some of the largest banks in the world were in the process of investing up to $50 million to ‘ create a digital system using blockchain technology to settle financial transactions .’ A spokeswoman from Barclays confirmed at the time that the research and development phase of USC was ‘ coming to an end .’
The $50 million in funds would make up a new entity called ‘ Fnality ‘, which would be tasked with running the project.
In June came confirmation of the evolvement of USC into ‘ Fnality International ‘ .In a subsequent press release, the founding shareholders of Fnality were listed as: Banco Santander.
