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The National Bank of Georgia has approved the Regulation on Inclusion in Open Banking. The regulation describes the enrollment procedure and ensures the correctness, reliability and security of the services of the entities enrolled. Non-bank institutions, provided that they meet the requirements stipulated by the regulation, are given the opportunity to engage in open banking as providers of both access to account information and payment initiation services. Any entity regulated by the National Bank of Georgia may be included in open banking.

The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) will launch a "limited access live pilot environment" (sounds like a proof-of-concept phase to me) to test central bank digital currency (CBDC) system technology capabilities and potential applications. At this stage, the NBG remains technologically agnostic for the Digital GEL project, and has announced a list of nine platform vendors to join the "on field" exploration. Upon selection stage completion, NBG will identify one of the vendors to move to the pilot stage to test the CBDC platform in a limited-time run live environment and evaluate the practical use cases. (There were some surprises to me in the list of vendors!)

The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) is inviting fintech companies to express interest in participating in its digital lari central bank digital currency (CBDC). In April 2021, NBG launched the first stage of the project and invited interested financial technology providers to participate. Now the NBG will select a technological partner based on information provided by the companies, including the CBDC system, technical capabilities, security, and technological proposal for the pilot project. The deadline for submissions is February 15, 2023.

The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) is inviting supervised entities to participate in its Regulatory Sandbox's tokenized deposits project, the goal of which is to create a regulatory framework with the involvement of stakeholders. The country's financial ecosystem does not currently regulate the use and offering of distributed ledger technology (DLT) based deposits and certificates of deposit (CDs). This project will potentially contribute to the creation of new financial products, the diversity of the financial ecosystem, the development of a CD secondary market, greater flexibility and diversification of deposit products, and optimization of product-related costs.

The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) reportedly plans to launch a retail central bank Digital currency (CBDC) pilot next year, following up on their April 30, 2021 request for fintech companies to cooperate in the digital lari project.

The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) has selected Ripple Labs as its technology partner for developing digital lari (GEL), its central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot project. The pilot will experiment with Ripple's CBDC technology and evaluate the practical use cases to gauge potential benefits for the public sector, businesses and retail users. The NBG made the decision following a competition process, which consisted of two phases: submission of a Project Execution Plan (PEP) by nine shortlisted candidates in the first phase, and demonstration of their technology solutions in the second. https://nbg.gov.ge/en/media/news/ripple-the-flagship-international-company-becomes-the-technology-partner-for-the-digital

The National Bank of Georgia (NBG) is considering launching a digital version of its national currency, the Lari (Gel). The NBG will use its Open Regulatory Framework tools, to facilitate the retail central bank digtital currency (CBDC) development process. Rapid live testing in a controlled environment should enable the agile development of CBDC technology and an impetus to develop underlying technology to full potential, enhancing risk management and user experience. Interaction with the RegLab should also help NBG to develop its regulatory approach and update legal framework to enable smooth and sustainable CBDC technology operation.

The National Bank of Georgia has approved regulations on the establishment and use of a regulatory sandbox, that will allow representatives of the financial sector to test innovative services and products in real time after internal testing.

Bitcoin payments company BitPay has filed paperwork with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish BitPay National Trust Bank to be headquartered in Alpharetta, Georgia. A national trust bank is a limited purpose national bank that engages in trust activities.

The National Bank of Georgia reportedly plans to roll out a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot. The central bank first announced the digital lari project in 2021 and invited innovators for a public-private partnership for the purpose.

Coinbase will allow U.S. retail customers to borrow fiat loans against as much as 30% of their bitcoin holdings in the fall. Credit lines will be capped at $20,000 per customer and an interest rate of 8% will be pffered for bitcoin-backed loans with terms that are a year or less. The exchange says it won't reinvest the collateral elsewhere and will keep the bitcoin at the exchange, unlike some crypto lenders who rehypothecate collateral or invests deposits into perpetual swaps. The new Coinbase product is only available in the following states: Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, Nebraska, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming. https://www.coinbase.com/borrow

The IMF published a paper on central bank digital currency (CBDC) developments in the Middle East and Central Asia (ME&CA) region. A survey of IMF country teams representing 31 ME&CA countries found that 19 are considering issuing or exploring CBDC, most of which are at the research stage, although a few are at the proof-of-concept (POC) stage (Bahrain, Georgia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates). Kazakhstan is most advanced in its CBDC journey, having initiated two digital tenge pilots. The region's fragile and conflict-affected states and low-income countries (LICs) have expressed limited interest. The paper also includes three country case studies (Jordan, Kazakhstan, and Libya).

The University of Georgia (UGA) published a summary of a paper that investigated the associations between social media usage and crypto investment behavior. It found that The study found that about half of social media users surveyed have invested in digital currencies. And the more social media platforms a user was active on, the more likely they were to invest.. Meanwhile, only 10% of non-social media users had invested in crypto. YouTube, Reddit, Twitter and Clubhouse users were the most likely to invest in crypto. Instagram users weren't as keen on crypto. The researchers found men and those with a higher risk tolerance were more likely to invest in crypto, but people with a higher education level and older people were less likely to invest in crypto.