The Lastest Worldwide Blockchain overview of Central Banks

All central banks over the world are making decisions regarding the current state of opportunities or threats bringing by Blockchain technology. They seem to come into action and forget their “wait & see” strategy adopted few years ago to tackle with challenges.

According to the last report of the world economic Forum 90 Central Banks engaged discussion about cryptocurrencies in 2017. Countries such as the United States, Norway, and England have demonstrated their support for cryptocurrencies and blockchains. The development of digital currencies in Thailand, the United Kingdom and Japan is progressing steadily.

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region have actively supported blockchain technology research and development, but China and South Korea have identified ICOs as illegal public financing operation. Take China into an example, the policy level tends to support the practical application of blockchain technology, and at the same time it shows a strict regulatory attitude toward digital currency and blockchain project hype.

Here are the excerpts of worldwide blockchain overviews of central banks:

Estonia, one of the most technologically savvy states in eastern Europe, has been probable winner to consider issuing a national cryptocurrency. However, Estcoin plan was rolled back by the President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi and the Central bank Governor Ardo Hansson. European institutions have probably to solve this issue regarding the role of cryptocurrencies within the European zone.
In the part of Hongkong, The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) is not about to issue a digital currency despite implement research on a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The treasury Joseph Chan explained “CBDC remains a subject which requires further study and more proof-of-concept work to ascertain its feasibility for payment applications.”
Some countries like South Africa and Thailand have implemented some trails on blockchain technology. South Africa's central bank has issued a trial of its blockchain-based system for interbank clearance and settlement.
Bank of Thailand (BoT) Veerathai Santiprabhob declared an immense endeavor to research and trail blockchain technology in various financial applications including supply chain, bond issuance and letters of guarantee.
Sberbank and the National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia biggest bank and the securities depository respectively, will test the issuance of an initial coin offering (ICO) on a regulatory platform established by the Bank of Russia, the country’s central bank.
China's central bank has finished work on a blockchain-based system that digitizes checks issued by domestic businesses, according to a senior official. Which means the agency's blockchain platform can essentially tokenize checks, while transactions can be controlled via smart contracts. A main benefit of the system, is to give regulators a transparent overview of the entire life cycle of a digital check, regardless of whether it is being redeemed for cash or being used as a security to back up other corporate assets.

We have been facing a big movement of central banks for the few weeks, more and more countries are sitting up and taking notice of cryptocurrencies and what they like to describe as distributed ledger technology (DLT). Accumulative countries have welcomed the blockchain technology, have begun to trail the technology and implement research on CBDCs. Interest in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) has risen in recent years: Canadian central Bank, Bank of England or Monetary Authority of Singapore are conducting experimentations for issuing their own CBDC. The introduction of CBDC may also lead banks to favor CBDC and thus endanger financial stability.

However, a clear statement the recognition of Bitcoin as a legal currency made by Japan last year seems not to be on the road map.