Trending Bitcoin News and Market Sentiment January 22nd, 2020: 6 Central Banks Conduct Joint CBDC Research, Internetless Bitcoin Connections in Venezuela

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Bitcoin
  • A temporary slip in Bitcoin price was all that stood in the way of a daily high so far at USD 8,797
  • The BIS have joined with the central banks of the EU, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom to conduct more research on central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
  • A Venezuelan group is working on a mesh network to allow users to connect to Bitcoin without the Internet

 

Bitcoin buyers have been upping their aggressiveness on mid-week trading, especially after a nervous slip during US trading times where price dipped to a daily low of USD 8,486. The immediate bounce from there and resulting Asian trading however has taken it back to a high of USD 8,797 (CoinDesk) and it is now trading just about a hundred dollars below that.

Some of the good news that could be buoying prices should include the confirmation that the central banks of five major economies and the European Union have combined with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) to conduct joint research on central bank digital currencies (CBDC).

Canada, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom have come together with the EU to share their experience with each other, especially to look for more potential use cases of CBDCs in their own jurisdictions. The Bank of England issued the joint announcement via a press release that read:

“The group will assess CBDC use cases; economic, functional and technical design choices, including cross-border interoperability; and the sharing of knowledge on emerging technologies. It will closely coordinate with the relevant institutions and forums – in particular, the Financial Stability Board and the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI).”

The head of BIS Innovation Hub Benoît Cœuré and Bank of England deputy governor Jon Cunliffe, have been appointed to co-chair the group, which is expected to gain participation from some senior representatives from the BIS and the member central banks.

Notably missing from this alliance will be the People’s Bank of China, who is already in the midst of trialing a digital yuan, but the move still marks a huge positive step forward in the acceptance of blockchain-based digital currencies like CBDCs. A number of central banks all over the world have already begun pilots. Others like in Venezuela already have had a full-fledged crypto called Petro supposedly backed by its own national currency, though it hasn’t arrived without its own host of transparency and legitimacy problems as alleged by international observers.

The most significant effort at the moment probably comes from the European Central Bank, whose president Christine Lagarde has thrown her full support behind the institution’s efforts in researching such a product.

Speaking of Venezuela, Bitcoin proponents continue to be popular there in a world of hyperinflation and dubious national crypto. In fact, a volunteer team is developing a decentralized mesh network called Locha that will enable people to use Bitcoin without the internet. The group claim that the mesh network will be using radio waves, and have been developing an alternative to the internet in a country with frequent power and internet disruptions.

BitcoinNews.com have previously covered Randy Brito in exclusive interviews, where he helped promote the use of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin to combat the effects of worsening hyperinflation. And now, Brito is leading another open-source project called Locha Mesh which is now developing two devices, named Turpial and Harpia.

Turpial is essentially a more basic version of a radio transmitter, using long-range radio waves that can work over distances of one to two kilometers in urban areas. An even more basic model is Harpia, that can be used to access Bitcoin network with small computers like the Raspberry Pi.

Both devices have been designed for extreme portability and can run on batteries. Of course, Bitcoin is not the only network they can connect to. Any public blockchain network can easily be integrated, as well as data transfer systems like IPFS.

Other than providing the ability to interact with the network, Brito told Monero community members in a discussion that resistance to censorship was another big motivation for building Locha Mesh:

“We are making something for the situations where you don’t have Internet at all, either due to lack of infrastructure, targeted censorship or in case you want to be completed anonymous so you don’t want to expose your home/phone IP address that is linked to your identity.”

 

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The post Trending Bitcoin News and Market Sentiment January 22nd, 2020: 6 Central Banks Conduct Joint CBDC Research, Internetless Bitcoin Connections in Venezuela appeared first on BitcoinNews.com.



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