The Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) completed the second phase of Project Rosalind, a pilot project to study the British CBDC, informally called Britcoin.
The BIS Innovation Hub reported the completion of the second phase of Project Rosalind, a joint pilot study with the Bank of England (BoE) on the central bank digital currency (CBDC). The study, launched in July 2022, involved experiments with application programming interfaces (APIs) in retail transactions with the Britcoin prototype.
The researchers concluded that retail CBDCs reduce transaction costs between individuals and increase their efficiency. The digital currency also enables the creation of new financial products based on it, helping to reduce fraud in this area. A total of 33 API features were developed during the research, and more than 30 retail CBDC use cases were tested.
The researchers studied digital currency programmability and security issues. They focused on the vulnerability of programmable money, but concluded that high-quality design of the financial instrument at the API level would ensure a secure interaction between CBDCs and the private sector.
Despite the positive results of Project Rosalind, Jon Cunliffe, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, said at Politico’s Global Tech Day conference that it could be several years before a final decision on the launch of CBDCs in the U.K., and that currently the chances of Britcoin being implemented are 70%. This is reported by Bloomberg.
Earlier, media reports had published studies showing that the United Kingdom was the largest “supplier” of fraudulent crypto companies in 2022. Some time later, the authorities of the country responded to the situation, having published plans to strengthen regulation of the cryptocurrency market, which would be implemented between 2023 and 2026.
