Representatives of several central banks met at a one-day conference in Kyiv, organized by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), to discuss the concept of state cryptovalues.
The one-day conference was initiated by the NBU, which in 2018 said it was considering issuing national e-currency and last summer issued a limited number of its own cryptov currencies.
The central bank wanted to test its ideas and conclusions on the results of the testing in the banking community and stimulate the discussion, the head of the Department for Innovative Development of the Central Bank of Ukraine, Roman Hartinger, said. The conference was attended by representatives of the central banks of Canada, Sweden, Japan, Lithuania, Finland, the Netherlands, Belarus, Uruguay and South Africa.
As it became known at the conference, the NBU suspended the experiment with its own crypt currency. Now the Central Bank expects additional information from the banking community and updating the regulation of digital assets in Ukraine. Although there are already some draft laws and concepts under consideration by the country's authorities, formal laws have not yet been adopted.
At the conference, representatives of the central banks of the Netherlands and Canada were rather sceptical about the distributed registry technology.
"The essence of the DLT infrastructure is that no party should be trusted enough, but don't we trust the central bank to maintain the integrity of the global distributed registry," said Harro Boven, Legislative Advisor in the Department of Payment Policy of the Netherlands Central Bank.
Scott Hendry, senior director of the Fintech business at the Bank of Canada, who was responsible for testing the Jasper project on the Corda platform, said "DLT is not needed to create a digital currency for the central bank.
"When you look at the DLT system and the current efficient centralized system for the sole purpose of interbank payments, there are no particular advantages to blockchains," Hendry said.
He added that the Bank of Canada has no plans to change anything in the set of technologies currently in use. None of the speakers ruled out the use of the DLT for the release of government cryptovoltaics in principle, but no one was particularly enthusiastic about the technology.
During the event, Hartinger also pointed out the atypical competitive situation in which central banks found themselves:
"Central banks see that technology giants are releasing stemcoins like Libra, and they see this niche of digital money. Now the question is, who will have the prerogative to issue money — the government or private technology companies?
A representative of a central bank who attended the conference shared his thoughts with CoinDesk, but asked not to be named. He said that Libra had become a catalyst for the study of the concept of state cryptovoltaics, which was long overdue. However, he said he was not worried about competition from Facebook.
"People will want to use Libra if our monetary system does not show itself in the best way. Our best defense — do our job", — he said.
Despite the general skepticism, not all central banks have given up on the idea of using a blockchain. The Swedish central bank recently announced the start of testing its own cryptographic currency. E-krona — a kind of electronic money for everyday use, a tool for household payments, denominated in local currency and available 24/7, Bjorn Segendorf, senior policy advisor to the Swedish Central Bank's payments department, told the event.
Segendorf said the Swedish Central Bank will not test the technology because the organization is configured to use a blockbuster solution. The CB wants to explore different options, he said. He said the main thing is to be ready for a cashless future as young people rely less and less on cash.
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