IMF MD Christian Lagarde recently chaired the meeting – “Money and Digital Payments’ where the CEO of Circle (part owned by Goldman Sachs) extolled the benefits of a sovereign currency using Blockchain technology, allowing globally trade not rely on central clearing institutions.Meanwhile in MFU- Japan’s largest bank has confirmed that it is to issue its own Blockchain powered digital currency later this year. Is it believed that digital wallets will replace physical wallets in the future.
This announcement follows Mizho’s statement that it was launching a digital currency, J Coin, pegged to the Japanese Yen, which will use QR codes scanned from a mobile phone. So far, Mizho have signed up 60 banks onto their new “Banking Digital Currency Platform”.
The Japanese seem to be taking a more accommodating stance towards Digital Assets, with proposed legislation being discussed that would relax their tax treatment. Which may explain why we are seeing a number of initiatives in Japan being announced.
In the UK, we have seen the announcement that Coinbase are to launch a VISA debit card that will allow conversion of digital assets to fiat and withdrawal cash from ATMs/ cash machines. The intention is that the card will be rolled out to other European countries in the coming months. Although users will be disappointed to see that transactions charges of 2.49% are to be levied, while usually there are no transactions charges using other types of debit cards. However, an interesting feature of the new Coinbase debit card is that they will notify users if their passwords are found on other websites, automatically blocking the Coinbase card as a way to protect card users.
