Russian central bank officials indicate that a digital ruble will launch in 2023

Bank of Russia deputy governor Alexei Zabotkin and first deputy governor Olga Skorobogatova revealed plans to release a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in 2023.  A prototype of the digital ruble will be created by December 2021. The Bank also published a fresh report on the current state and future plans for the project.

The Bank of Canada is Looking to Hire a CBDC Solutions Architect

The Bank of Canada continues on its CBDC hiring campaign, this time looking for a CBDC “solutions architect” to “provide design leadership in one or more areas of core architecture such as the evaluation of vendor solutions and proposed customizations, performance and scalability of the real-time settlement layer, integration with payment rails, third party payment systems and point of sale systems, platform and API design, and atomic offline value transfer and interoperability.”

Stablecoin Assessment Framework

This Bank of Canada paper proposes a framework to allow authorities to understand the defining characteristics of stablecoin arrangements, to be specific about any concerns they may have, and to be objective in their treatment from issuer to issuer. First, it classifies arrangements into three parts, coin structure, related transfer system(s) and related financial service(s), and then categorizes the attributes of each one. Secondly, it identifies specific risk scenarios that are relevant to the stablecoin arrangement, and thirdly, it quantifies the range of probable loss and possible frequency associated with the identified risk scenarios.

Supervising crypto-assets for anti-money laundering

This BIS paper assesses emerging crypto-asset financial integrity (e.g., anti-money laundering) regulatory approaches and supervisory practices and identifies policy priorities to address common challenges faced by financial authorities. It points to opportunities to adopt new approaches, like blockchain analytics, that take advantage of the inherently data-rich nature of the crypto-asset sector. Also, the inherently cross-border nature of crypto-assets, as well as the uneven global implementation of international standards in this area, make international cooperation a critical component for effective supervision. 

Signal Messenger goes cryptocurrency with MobileCoin: proof-of-Intel-CPU

Signal just blew a huge hole in its credibility, when it announced that the Signal app would be getting a payments interface — using a cryptocurrency. Specifically, its founder’s own cryptocurrency.