Bank of England CBDC Academic Advisory Group: Call for interest
The Bank of England (BoE) and HM Treasury (HMT) are inviting researchers to join a newly created central bank digital currency (CBDC) Academic Advisory Group. Through this Group, the BoE and HMT seeks academic input and promote interdisciplinary discussions on a range of topics related to retail CBDC, and of relevance to their digital pound work during the design phase. The application deadline is September 3, 2023. [Read more at the BoE]. The BoE and HMT are also looking to form two working groups to explore digital pound offline payments and retailer needs. The deadline for experts in these topics to apply is September 3, 2023. [Read more at the BoE]
SEC to seek appeal and stay in Ripple Labs court case
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is moving to appeal a July 2023 court decision from its lawsuit against Ripple Labs, which had ruled the sale of XRP is not a “security” when sold to retail investors. It asked for the case to be put on hold during the appeal, saying there are multiple other pending court cases that could be affected depending on the appeal’s outcome. Specifically, in its appeal, the SEC will challenge the court’s holding that Ripple’s programmatic offers and sales to XRP buyers over crypto-asset trading platforms and its “other distributions” did not involve the offer or sale of securities. [Read more at Coin Telegraph and the SEC letter at Docdroid]
Ripple joins BIS cross-border payments task force
The crypto press has discovered that Ripple is part of a task force convened by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructure (CPMI) cross-border payments interoperability and extension (PIE) task force. That does seem to be a big deal, because Ripple has been persona non grata in any international forums in which the US government plays a key role, on account of the firm’s ongoing legal dispute between the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). It’s why you haven’t seen much, if any engagement between Ripple and any G20 central banks since the legal dispute started in 2020. [Read more at the BIS CPMI events website]
*For those interested in intra-day updates, check out my searchable Diigo Fintech developments database, which is also a good place to go to query for past developments: https://www.diigo.com/user/kiffmeister/ART.
Kiffmeister’s central bank digital currency monthly monitor
Just a reminder that I produce a monthly digest of central bank digital currency (CBDC) developments exclusively for the official sector. So (only) if you work at a central bank, ministry of finance or international financial institution (e.g., the BIS, IMF, OECD, World Bank) and who would like to receive it by email on the first business day of every month, please DM me on LinkedIn or email me at chronicles@kiffmeister.com.
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