BNP Paribas, a French international banking conglomerate, has been in the news recently as a result of the announcement that the conglomerate, along with the French bank CA CIB and the French investing company Caisse des Dépôts, has launched a project to investigate the possibility of a digital interbank currency (DIBC). Tokeny, a company that provides solutions for tokenization, and The Blockchain XDEV will also participate in the venture in question (A subsidiary of the Blockchain Group). In point of fact, the members of the project have reached out to other international participants, and it is anticipated that the project will be finished in the year 2021.
The participants in question have decided to investigate how financial transactions involving digital assets can be settled on platforms using the Ethereum and Tezos blockchain technologies. However, it is important to note that the announcement made by The Blockchain Group does not provide any explanation as to why Ethereum and Tezos were selected as the winners.
After announcing the development of a proof-of-concept with the Bank of Thailand for a digital Baht, it is possible to argue that ConsenSys’s recent projects have sent a signal to several central banks to explore Ethereum’s technology. This is especially true after it announced that it was working on the proof-of-concept with the Bank of Thailand. As a matter of fact, ConsenSys also partnered with the HKMA in order to conduct a cross-border payment trial with Thailand as a component of the second phase of Project Inthanon-LionRock.
A partnership between Consensys and Societe Generale Forge has been announced in Europe for the purpose of conducting CBDC tests with the Banque de France. SocGen Forge, a company that is using Tezos as the platform for its trials, was one of the eight companies that the French Central Bank had announced would participate in its wholesale CBDC trials. This announcement came after the Central Bank of France made the selection.
According to the aforementioned announcement, these organisations will conduct tests to determine whether or not the transactions of tokens or securities that take place within blockchain networks are atomized. The participants intend to conduct a test of the atomic delivery feature, which has the potential to accelerate transactions while simultaneously lowering costs. Throughout the course of the project, the partners will also compile data regarding the legal implications of the various transactions. They intend to make use of this information in order to contribute to the exploratory work that is being done on digital asset regulations by the European Union.
In the meantime, the Reserve Bank of Australia held a meeting earlier this month with a number of different organisations to plan a proof of concept (PoC) for a wholesale CBDC that would be based on distributed ledger technology (DLT), or more specifically, on Ethereum. In other news, the Central Bank of Argentina (BCRA) has developed a clearing system that is powered by blockchain technology. This system has the potential to be utilised by some of the largest financial institutions in the country.
It is also interesting to note that BNP Paribas, the eighth largest bank in the world based on total assets, has been running much further ahead of its American counterparts than they have been. This is especially true considering that it launched a proof of concept with Curv, a provider of digital asset services, in July. This occurred around the same time that the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in the United States permitted nationally chartered banks to store and transfer digital assets.