
Regulators like HKMA and SFC united with local private sector firms like HSBC and HashKey to support the tokenization market in Hong Kong.
The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the financial regulator and central bank of Hong Kong, is collaborating with the industry to explore asset tokenization.
HKMA officially announced on May 7 that it will form a special community comprising industry representatives and regulators to develop tokenization standards.
Called “Project Ensemble Architecture Community,” the community aims to supervise and support the development of tokenization projects in Hong Kong.
Bundesbank’s president Joachim Nagel urged central banks to revamp their business models and adopt digital currencies during the BIS Innovation Summit.
Central banks’ future depends on a revision of their business model and speedy adoption of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), said Joachim Nagel, president of the Bundesbank and member of the European Central Bank (ECB).
Nagel reportedly warned about the uncertainty surrounding central banks during a panel session at the Innovation Summit hosted by the Bank for International Settlements on May 6.
“If you would have asked me 20 years ago if the central bank business model” was “destroyable or not, I would have said no,” he reportedly stated in Basel, Switzerland. Nagel continued:
The Deutsche Bundesbank is the fourth central monetary authority to conduct research in conjunction with MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative.
The Deutsche Bundesbank is the latest monetary authority to team up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) to study central bank digital currency (CBDC). President of the German central bank Joachim Nagel spoke at the launch of the project about challenges ahead for the digital euro.
Nagel told MIT students that the joint research will focus on designing security and privacy measures in a CBDC. The problem is that private digital payment solutions often use third-party services that gain access to consumers’ payment data, which they can use for commercial purposes. In contrast:
Nagel went on the say the current payments system does not work well. “German bank cards, for example, don’t always work in other euro area countries, even if they contain a payment scheme operated by an international company,” he said.
New Zealand's central bank has taken a four-stage approach to CBDC issuance and aims to issue an in-house digital dollar by 2023.
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) opened a 101-day public consultation on the principles and design options it created for the nation’s digital dollar. However, the central bank plans to discuss the issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in future consultations.
RBNZ has taken a four-stage approach to CBDC issuance and aims to issue an in-house digital dollar by 2023. New Zealand’s central bank is in the second stage of its digital cash initiative, which involves exploring high-level design options for digital cash and related consulting and budgeting.
On April 17, the central bank released a consultation paper to help determine “future work on whether digital cash is right for New Zealand.” The consultation closes on July 26.
Bank of Israel deputy governor Andrew Abir is eager for the digital shekel to shake up commercial banks.
While the impact of central bank digital currency (CBDC) on commercial banks has often been seen as a source of concern, Bank of Israel deputy governor Andrew Abir took a contrarian view in a speech published on the central bank’s website. Let the banks scramble to compete, he said, in essence.
Years of effort to increase competition in the Israeli banking sector have paid off in a variety of ways, but “we still have a long way to go,” Abir said. As the Bank of Israel raised interest rates to combat inflation, banks raised interest rates on credit, but the rise in deposit rates was “partial and slow.” He added:
The design of the digital shekel includes an option to pay interest on it. Abir confidently declared that the digital shekel, which is still in its planning stages, would enjoy public support: