On March 31, 2022, the People’s Bank of China held a symposium on the pilot work of digital RMB (digital yuan) research and development to summarize the preliminary research and development pilot work, and arrange the deployment of the next stage of work. Present at the symposium were Yi Gang, Governor of the People’s Bank…
House Democrat representatives today are introducing a bill that calls for the development of an electronic version of the U.S. dollar that has the same legal status and privacy expectations as physical cash. The bill, titled Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware (ECASH) Act, would direct the U.S. Treasury Department, not the Federal Reserve, nota bene,…
Few product announcements have stirred such activities among governments around the world as the then Facebook’s, now Meta’s, announcement of the then Libra, now the dead Diem, announcement. The prospects of having a private company with billions of users issue money was just too much for legislators. All of the sudden, everyone was planning a…
Ever since Facebook, now Meta, launched the Libra (Diem) project in 2019, in partnership with twenty or so other companies, including MasterCard and Visa, nation-states worldwide have been in a hurry to develop digital versions of their sovereign currencies, also known as Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs for short. In China, which has, by…
The U.S. Federal Reserve has taken its first step towards issuing a central bank digital currency (CBDC). And while a digital dollar is still years away even if the Fed decides to move forward with the idea, the prospect of an American CBDC should worry the crypto industry. In its new report, titled “Money and…
Bitcoin, Ethereum peer-to-peer volumes in Nigeria continue surging Despite the crypto ban in Nigeria, the country has recorded massive growth in its peer-to-peer bitcoin trade volumes in recent times. Available data has revealed that in the month of June, citizens of the country traded around $38 million worth of digital assets —the second time the…