Chinese officials are considering a cross-border Asian stablecoin in Hong Kong, to facilitate a cross-border payment network between three Asian countries, and four currencies - China, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. The world’s second-largest economy is aiming to build Hong Kong into an international financial center in the digital economy era.     At China’s annual “Two Sessions,” also known as the National People’s Congress, China’s most important annual political event in Beijing, officials set the decision to impose new national security legislation on Hong Kong.    The annual political event was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, as the representatives of the National People’s Congress continue to advise on post-pandemic economic recovery.    Neil Shen, also known as Shen...

The French Central Bank, Banque de France has recently successfully trialed a central bank digital currency (CBDC) – the digital euro, operating on a blockchain.      The Bank of France experimented with the use of a central bank digital currency to test a sale of securities, which was carried out by Société Générale Forge.    Banque de France launched a program of experiments to test out potential central bank digital currency (CBDC) aimed for interbank settlements. Potential participants have been invited to submit their applications to experiment with the use of a digital euro.    The three main objectives of the CBDC experiment includes identifying benefits, analyzing potential risks, and modeling as CBDC-based interbank settlement.    A maximum of ten CBDC-related applications create...

IBM has announced a new collaboration with blockchain-based trade finance platform, we.trade to enhance network capabilities and accelerate the global growth of the platform. We.trade was designed to connect buyers, sellers, banks, insurers, and other organizations in a network, simplifying cross-border trading.      We.trade is backed by a group of banks, including Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Rabobank, Santander, UBS,  Société Générale, and a few others. As one of the largest blockchain-enabled trade networks in the world, the blockchain platform first aimed to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Europe to get better access to trade finance. With the new partnership with IBM, we.trade is looking to scale globally as it is expanding in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.    Built on t...