During a three-day event in Washington, DC, hosted by the World Bank, the Intentional Monetary Fund and the US Federal Reserve, representatives from a range of central banks worldwide offered private details about the ongoing work at their respective institutions.
At the gathering last week the central bank leaders expressed broad interest in how the technology might impact both the banks they regulate as well as their own regulatory practices, attendees say.
Perianne Boring, who is the president and co-founder of the DC-based Digital Chamber of Commerce, which helped organize the blockchain portion of the event, said in interview those institutions haven’t made much of this work publicly known in the past.
Boring told CoinDesk: "What we learned is that there were a number of central banks around the world who have digital currency and blockchain focus groups. These aren’t things that were necessarily announced, but were discussed in off-the-record conversations." Blockchain and FinTech was the focus of the 16th annual three-day Conference on Policy Challenges for the Financial Sector, which began on 1st June at the Federal Reserve headquarters in DC.
Ninety central banks from around the world participated, according to organizers. Blockchain pitches
During the event, Chain CEO Adam Ludwin gave a keynote address about blockchain, followed by a panel discussion that featured Boring, Bloq founder Jeff Garzik, Nasdaq vice-president Fredrik Voss and Goldman Sachs managing director Tom Jessop.
It was in the aftermath of that panel, as well as in private conversations throughout the event, that Boring says the degree of engagement from central bank officials began to become apparent.
Central bank representatives posed a wide range of questions that demonstrated an “astute” and “attuned” understanding of the technology, she said.According to Boring, a number of “higher level questions” came from central banks leaders from emerging markets in particular, drawn from institutions […]
