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As Washington shifts focus to the next phases of the coronavirus crisis response, there is more vocal discussion of infrastructure investment. Any investment in infrastructure needs to include digital financial infrastructure. It is imperative that the U.S. upgrade its financial infrastructure on four digital fronts: payments; currency; identity, and data.

"The purpose of this World Bank report is to assess whether digitizing the equity or debt financing used for infrastructure projects using blockchain, that is, tokenized infrastructure, provides enough benefits to justify the use of this technology. The information presented here aims to inform the World Bank whether it should explore the possibility of tokenizing one of its infrastructure projects. The conclusions are based on interviews with tokenization start-ups, experts, and the review of current and planned regulatory frameworks in selected jurisdictions and use cases/pilots to date."

"Over the past decade, advances in public key cryptography, hash functions, virtualisation, distributed consensus, multiparty computation, and peer-to-peer networking have led to experimentation around record sharing between erstwhile competitive firms. Over the past five years, a series of independent efforts has chaperoned regulatory requirements into a digital, automated state that enables secure information sharing in full compliance with the law, while simultaneously enabling market participants to mutualise infrastructure that would otherwise be run by a single trusted party. With these developments, many of the services that centralised intermediaries currently provide could potentially be replaced by decentralised infrastructures or decentralised financial market infrastructure (dFMI). dFMI also enables a change in business structure, where a re-alignment of incentives can take place such that those firms taking risks can fully bear the consequences of these risks."

"The purpose of this report is to assess whether digitizing the equity or debt financing used for infrastructure projects using blockchain, that is, tokenized infrastructure, provides enough benefits to justify the use of this technology. The information presented here aims to inform the World Bank whether it should explore the possibility of tokenizing one of its infrastructure projects. The conclusions are based on interviews with tokenization start-ups, experts, and the review of current and planned regulatory frameworks in selected jurisdictions and use cases/pilots to date."

The Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) and International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) published their final "same risk, same regulation" guidance on regulating stablecoin arrangements (SAs). The guidance highlights that the transfer function of an SA is comparable to the transfer function performed by other types of financial market infrastructure (FMI). As a result, an SA that performs this transfer function is considered an FMI for the purpose of applying the Principles for Financial Market Infrastructures (PFMI) and, if determined by relevant authorities to be systemically important, the SA as a whole would be expected to observe all relevant principles in the PFMI.

"Bitcoin can only fulfill its purpose if its value is not destabilized by failing infrastructure problems. The fact that one single platform, BitMEX, can move the price of BTC from 1 to almost 0 is a massive problem for Bitcoin. Now more than ever, there is a need for better market infrastructure."

m-CBDC arrangements are most effective and efficient if the multiple CBDCs are hosted on the same infrastructure and platform. But this runs into a significant governance challenge: some central banks will be unwilling to share their CBDC infrastructure with certain other central banks, and some central banks may not be willing to share their infrastructure with anyone at all. One possible solution would be to "unbundle" the digital currency stack to improve governability of m-CBDC networks and create a viable path towards making m-CBDC arrangements a reality. This article will briefly explore the concept of a digital currency stack, with the aim of encouraging further discussion, collaboration and co-creation.

Coinbase has bought blockchain infrastructure startup, Bison Trails, which provides an easy-to-use platform to launch and run nodes on any blockchain network. Bison Trails will serve as a foundational element within Coinbase's ecosystem suite of products, while continuing to operate as a standalone product and provide its "infrastructure as a service" to its current customers. It enables holders of digital tokens to run their own validators or simply custody their holdings offline and delegate the stake to another company's validator.

Through CBDC, governments could send direct payments much more rapidly than through checks or tax refunds and could provide geographically and temporally targeted relief. The CBDC supporting infrastructure would also enable fund receivers to make payments and transfers seamlessly to other CBDC holders and/or non-CBDC holders, anywhere and anytime across the economy. CBDC could reinforce the resilience of a country's retail payment services, especially in those cases where private sector infrastructures are disrupted, due to technical problems, personnel unavailability, or inability of service providers to operate. The 'programmability' of CBDC could be used to monitor and control how, when, and where recipients utilise the funds. Finally, CBDC could enable people to substitute for cash and in-person payment methods when social distancing is required, or if the use of cash plummets as people worry about germs. Still, CBDC projects will take time to materialise, and meanwhile existing infrastructures could be improved to facilitate transfers and payments.

"A late-game attempt to make changes to controversial cryptocurrency tax reporting requirements included in the Senate's infrastructure bill died [when it didn't get the required unanimous consent]... Alabama Senator Richard Shelby motioned to add his own amendment to the broader infrastructure bill: a $50 billion earmark for defense. The combined package was subsequently shot down by an objection from Bernie Sanders... The Senate is expected to vote today on a final bill, which will then need to go through the House."

The Bank of England is proposing a limit of between £10,000 and £20,000 per individual as the appropriate balance between managing risks and supporting wide usability of the digital pound. The Technology Working Paper accompanying the Consultation Paper sets out an illustrative and complementary conceptual model consisting of a core ledger, API layer, analytics and alias service. The core ledger operated by the Bank might be centralised, running as a traditional database, or it might use Distributed Ledger Technology (whether a blockchain or another form of the technology). The Bank would provide the digital pound and the central infrastructure, including the 'core ledger'. Private sector firms - which could be banks or approved non-bank firms - would provide the interface between the Bank's central infrastructure and users by offering wallets and payment services. These private companies would be able to integrate the digital pound, as the settlement asset, into the services they would offer to wallet holders. The wallets would be operated on a 'pass-through' basis. That is to say, they would not constitute a claim on the wallet provider in the way that a bank account is a claim on a bank. Nor would they represent a custody arrangement. Rather, the wallets would hold all of the customer related information and 'pass-through' the customers instructions to the Bank's infrastructure. All of the digital pounds would be held on the Bank of England's central ledger.

UnionBank of the Philippines has raised ₱11 billion from its maiden digital peso bond offering - the first of its kind in the country. The 1.5-year bonds with a fixed per annum rate of 3.25% were issued through the digital registry/repository of Philippine Depository and Trust Corp. (PDTC) using infrastructure powered by STACS blockchain. The new digital infrastructure was kept interoperable with the Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp (PDEx) Fixed Income Market's traditional trading to clearing infrastructure.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has created a Payments Infrastructure Development Fund (PIDF) to encourage more merchants to deploy Points of Sale infrastructure. The RBI will make an initial contribution of ₹250 crores to the PIDF covering half the fund and remaining contribution will be from card issuing banks and card networks operating in the country. The PIDF will also receive recurring contributions to cover operational expenses from card issuing banks and card networks. The Reserve Bank will also contribute to yearly shortfalls, if necessary.

"EMTECH, an award-winning software company modernizing central banking infrastructure for financial inclusion and resilience, with blockchain-based platforms, and Hedera Hashgraph, provider of the most used, sustainable, enterprise-grade public network for the decentralized economy, announced today a partnership to develop an enterprise-grade, highly performant, highly secure and energy efficient CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) infrastructure product."

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper on Brazil's recent experience with the Pix retail instant payment system. Since launching in November 2020, Pix has signed up 67% of adults in Brazil, with free payments between individuals and low charges for merchants. The two key ingredients in the success of Pix are, first, the mandatory participation of large banks to kick-start network effects for users, and second, the central bank's dual role as infrastructure provider and rule setter. Pix has also shown how central bank infrastructures can support interoperability and competition, promoting lower costs and greater financial inclusion. These features also have relevance for the possible adoption of retail CBDC.

"The Libra Project represents a bold new proposition to create financial infrastructure in this new global ecosystem."

"Right now, though, speed is of the essence. There is no time to create entirely new payments infrastructure to deliver coronavirus relief. Ideally, Treasury will find a way to leverage the infrastructure of the enormously successful Direct Express program to avoid sending paper checks. "

The Central Bank of Brazil has kicked off a new phase in the testing process for Pix, the upcoming national instant payments platform, with the simulation of transfers. The tests of the technology underpinning the settlement infrastructure will see participating institutions testing their settlement flows, so the process where resources are transferred from the payer to the recipient, with fictitious data.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published a report on the foundational digital infrastructure necessary for an inclusive digital economy and seamless cross-border transactions around the world, in collaboration with Mastercard and the central banks of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Ghana, and Kenya. The report highlighted four key pillars; digital identity, authorisation and consent, payments interoperability and data exchange standards.

The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs (ECON) of the European Parliament has published a draft report on on the proposal for a regulation on a pilot regime for market infrastructures based on distributed ledger technology (DLT). The proposed regulation is intended to provide a mechanism for allowing market infrastructures to experiment with certain restricted uses of DLT. The report indicates overall support for the proposed regulation, but presents a number of amendments aimed at ensuring the final proposal delivers the stated objectives of the pilot programme.