Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues are moving ahead cautiously and methodically.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is also expected to release the results of its research into the technological challenges associated with implementing a CBDC in the U.S.
It would take five-to-ten years to introduce a digital currency in the U.S., several experts say, but they argue policymakers can’t sit idly by.
In collaboration with a team at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, MIT experts have begun designing and testing technical research through which further examination of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) can be performed in the U.S.
The effort, known as Project Hamilton, is in an exploratory phase, and the research is not intended as a pilot or for public deployment. Instead, the researchers have explored two different approaches that could be used to process transactions, and thus could indicate the technical feasibility of a potential CBDC model. In a process involving significant design flexibility, the MIT group tested factors such as the volume and speed of transactions, and the resilience of the systems in general, among other requirements for a viable digital currency.
“The core of what we built is a high-speed transaction processor for a centralized digital currency, to demonstrate the throughput, latency, and resilience of a system that could support a payment economy at the scale of the United States,” says Neha Narula, director of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative and a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, who led the effort with the Boston Fed. “It is important to note that this project is not a comment on whether or not the U.S. should issue a CBDC—but work like this is vital to help determine the answer to that question. This project serves as a platform for creating and comparing more viable designs, and provides a place to experiment and collaborate on more advanced digital currency functionality.”
Peter Nesswhy is he so eager for Biden’s approval? Doesn’t he have parents?
Eric KlienAdmin.
Peter Ness Biden keeps saying that GM is the U.S. leader in EVs and this ticks off Elon. In fact, the old GM plant in California that Tesla bought for a big $42 million produced more cars than any other U.S. factory last year. (All EVs, of course.)
Genevieve Klien shared a link.
While the second leading cryptocurrency is getting ready for its highly anticipated upgrade, platforms keep moving away to other networks.
Listen to article.
Ben RayfieldWeather control tech exists, to some extent. EMP weapons exist. If there was a 477 mile long lightning, it was probably either due to the sun or is a weapon or a terraforming experiment.
Quinn SenaAuthor.
GIPHY
Genevieve Klien shared a link.
According to a series of etherscan transactions, an attacker has exploited Wormhole, a bridge between the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, for close to $323 million in ETH.
Wormhole is a bridging protocol that enables assets to move across various blockchain protocols. When a user sends assets from one chain to another, the bridge locks the assets and mints a wrapped version of the funds on the destination chain.
Biohackers follow a trend originating in the US, using “hacks” to try and turn back their biological clocks.
Proposals in Wyoming and Arizona to accept tax payments in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would undermine the dollar’s unique status.
Proposals in Wyoming and Arizona to accept tax payments in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies would undermine the dollar’s unique status.
China has designated some cities and entities to trial blockchain applications, underscoring the importance Beijing is attaching to this particular technology.
In 2019, President Xi Jinping called on China to “seize the opportunities” presented by blockchain, giving his personal backing to the technology.
The Chinese capital Beijing and mega city Shanghai as well as Guangzhou in the south are all part of the pilot projects. Local government departments, universities, banks, hospitals, car companies and power firms are among the 164 entities chosen by China to carry out trial blockchain applications.
Quantum computers could cause unprecedented disruption in both good and bad ways, from cracking the encryption that secures our data to solving some of chemistry’s most intractable puzzles. New research has given us more clarity about when that might happen.
Modern encryption schemes rely on fiendishly difficult math problems that would take even the largest supercomputers centuries to crack. But the unique capabilities of a quantum computer mean that at sufficient size and power these problems become simple, rendering today’s encryption useless.
That’s a big problem for cybersecurity, and it also poses a major challenge for cryptocurrencies, which use cryptographic keys to secure transactions. If someone could crack the underlying encryption scheme used by Bitcoin, for instance, they would be able to falsify these keys and alter transactions to steal coins or carry out other fraudulent activity.
Last fall, Texas Governor Greg Abbott gathered dozens of cryptocurrency deal makers in Austin where they discussed an idea that, on its face, seemed almost upside down: Electricity-hungry Bitcoin miners could shore up the state’s power grid, a top priority after a deep freeze last winter triggered blackouts that left hundreds dead.
The industry’s advocates have been making that pitch to the governor for years. The idea is that the miners’ computer arrays would demand so much electricity that someone would come along to build more power plants, something Texas badly needs. If the grid starts to go wobbly, as it did when winter storm Uri froze up power plants in February 2021, miners could quickly shut down to conserve energy for homes and businesses. At least two Bitcoin miners have already volunteered to do just that.
