ChainReg17: Quiet Signals, Intensifying Competition

The crypto crackdown burrows into technical regulatory language while across Europe, Asia, and Australia, central banks press the accelerator on CBDC projects

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This week sees central banks in the UK, France, ASEAN, and Australia making steady, deliberate progress in their launch efforts for CBDCs that can compete with cryptocurrencies. In Europe, they were provided with a boost from the President of the European Council.

Meanwhile, policymakers in the United States and the United Kingdom continue to pressure different parts of the crypto community using increasingly technical and indirect tools. 

The UK move is not surprising. In an otherwise perfunctory strategic plan document; the Prudential Regulation Authority is pledging to press forward with new regulatory standards governing cryptoasset markets even as it presses for international standards at the Basel Committee level. 

Importantly, the PRA’s priorities include “Interconnections with the cryptoassets ecosystem” which, like SVB and Signature Bank in the United States, includes connections to regulated financial institutions.

The BIS itself (which we place in Antartica in the map below) is also actively contributing to the CBDC initiatives with targeted pilots and research regarding the latest euphemism for digital currencies: “cryptography.”