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"Miami launched its own crypto-asset, MiamiCoin, which will be used to fund infrastructure projects or events in the city. The idea is that people will support Miami by buying or mining MiamiCoin, and funds will be diverted to the city's treasury. MiamiCoin will be the first CityCoin released. CityCoins is a project that allows people to invest in a city by buying tokens. It works with local governments so those who invest are rewarded in Bitcoin or Stacks. MiamiCoin additionally benefits holders by allowing them to Stack (STX) and earn yield through the Stacks protocol."

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 launched Base, a layer 2 network built using Optimism's OP Stack, to attract millions of new crypto users in the coming years. Coinbase is joining Optimism as a core developer on the open-source OP Stack, a developer toolkit for the Optimism network, the firm said. However, Base will not be limited to Ethereum, it will also provide easy and secure access to layer 2 networks such as Optimism, as well as other blockchains ecosystems like Solana. See also: https://noelleacheson.subStack.com/p/weekly-feb-25-2023?publication_id=1104537&post_id=105030192&isFreemail=true

When South Korean investors piled into Bitcoin in late 2017, its price in Korean won soared even higher than the dollar, with Korean traders paying up to fifty percent more than westerners. With this 'kimchi premium', as it came to be known, returning to the market, what are the implications for Asian traders and for Bitcoin?

Digital Currencies have always been on Guardtime's agenda. Indeed, our first conversations about building a digital cash system with Central Banks started in the early 2000s. Although there was no clear market opportunity then, we continued to do fundamental research. Over the last 5 years our research efforts intensified, leading to the invention of KSICash, a full stack infrastructure for CBDC built on KSI Blockchain. Over the weeks and months ahead we will have a lot to say about KSICash, its properties and why we think it can be a strong candidate for a CBDC, meeting the scalability, performance, security and resilience requirements that central banks will demand.

ConsenSys has joined the Bank of Thailand to explore the potential of blockchain technology in the development of a proof-of-concept prototype for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) project, alongside SCG and Digital Ventures (DV). The private-permissioned network on Hyperledger Besu will be designed to meet both the functional and non-functional requirements of a retail CBDC. One of the business cases will test the use of a CBDC to simulate daily commerce, automate payments, and support procurement and financial management system called Procure-to-Pay (B2P) developed by DV. In the exploration, CBDC will be tested and issued using ERC20 smart contracts. In partnership with Thailand partner Atato, ConsenSys will architect a solution using its Enterprise Ethereum stack, including ​Codefi​ and ​MetaMask​

"Roxe's full stack solution knits together issuance, management, distribution, and interoperation of different CBDCs with banks, central banks, cross-border money transfer companies, and peer-to-peer payment providers in a single network. This is an audacious vision, to rework the global payments system. DeFi and CeFi are losing their distinction. The global payments system needs a rework, integrating CBDCs into it and providing payment rails come as the first step in true digital asset trading towards a global capital market."

The BIS published a paper that provides a deep dive into the architecture, technical primitives, and financial functionalities of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. It analyzes and explains the individual components and how they interact through the lens of a DeFi stack reference model featuring three layers: settlement, applications and interfaces. Then, it describes the financial services for the most relevant DeFi categories, i.e., decentralized exchanges, lending protocols, derivatives protocols and aggregators. It discusses how composability allows complex financial products to be assembled, which could have applications in the traditional financial industry.

A new experiment by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub and Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) shows central bank digital currency (CBDC) can work with private stablecoins, even if intermediary operators go bust. Project Aurum created a technology stack comprised of a wholesale interbank system and a retail e-wallet system, setting up two different types of tokens: intermediated CBDC and stablecoins backed by CBDC in the interbank system.

According to a report published by New York Federal Reserve (NY Fed) and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) systems operating on different types of networks can be used for cross-border and cross-currency payments. The study, which used simulated CBDCs and hypothetical payments, found that cross-border transactions could be conducted across different distributed ledger (DLT) and hashed timelock contract (HTLC) technology stacks, with near real-time settlement finality. https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/nyic/project-cedar

Ripple has enhanced its CBDC Platform launched in March 2022, that is based on the private ledger private version of the public, open-source XRP Ledger. The enhancements enable issuers to manage the full life cycle of their fiat based digital currency, from minting and distribution to redemption and destruction, taking advantage of the XRP Ledger's built-in multi-signing capabilities. It's billed as a "full stack" platform in that it manages the full CBDC lifecycle, including the provision of end-user wallets. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230518005115/en/Ripple-Launches-CBDC-Platform-for-the-Development-of-CBDCs-and-Stablecoins

"This paper studies the desirability of programmable payments where transfers are automatically executed conditional upon preset objective criteria. We do so by studying optimal payment arrangements in a framework that captures a wide range of economic relationships between two parties. Our framework stacks the cards in favor of programmable payments by considering an environment without legal recourse. The results show that the optimal payment arrangements for long-term economic relationships consist predominantly of simple direct payments. Direct payments increase the surplus by avoiding the liquidity cost of locking-up funds from the moment where the payer commits the funds in a programmable payment until the moment where the conditions are satisfied to release those funds to the payee. Programmable payments will be desirable, and may in fact be the only viable payment arrangement, in situations where economic relationships are of a short duration. "

Project Diamond, a smart contract-powered platform designed by seasoned asset managers for institutions to seamlessly create, buy, and sell digitally native assets, has launched with the execution of the first debt instrument on the platform, in preparation to enter the Abu Dhabi Global Market ("ADGM") RegLab sandbox. The platform leverages the Coinbase technology stack and Base to deliver secure, compliant, capital market activity that will continue to unlock institutional adoption of the global cryptoeconomy.

Philadelphia is exploring a partnership with CityCoins. CityCoins offer people a way to support their city and grow its crypto treasury while earning bitcoin and the native Stacks (STX) tokens for themselves. Current iterations include MiamiCoin and NYCCoin. The idea is that city residents mine STX tokens, with 30% being deposited into a digital wallet for use by the designated city. The tokens can be used for whatever the city deems fit, and holders can convert them to bitcoin.

The entire crypto space has been a Jenga stack of interconnected time bombs for months now, as the companies find new ways to prop each other up. Headlines talked about millions, billions, trillions of dollars in crypto being made or lost - but that's all virtual money that never existed. With a serious shortage of actual dollars, the crypto economy had to keep coming up with more and more elaborate schemes to try to extract real money from retail investors. Venture capitalists frantically promoted NFTs and Web3, trying to lure in precious dollars. The 2021 bubble brought forth a wave of "investment firms" offering interest rates on the order of 20%. This is just not possible in the present economy. If anyone offers 20%, your first thought should be: "what's wrong here?"

Chris Brummer draws from his recent white paper on disclosure and decentralized finance (DeFi), to introduce some new concepts to the DeFi lexicon for building out disclosure delivery systems native to the crypto ecosystem. He imagines disclosure systems that are programmable, capable of evolving with technology - and which could provide the infrastructure for further tools for empowering participants in the Metaverse and beyond. If properly developed, the ideas could draw on DeFi's strengths and provide more functionality and security than regulators' legacy technology stack. Moreover, they could afford a new generation of developers and engineers a unique opportunity to reorient disclosure towards its original purpose: to be read.

The IMF published a paper on India's foundational digital public infrastructure (DPI), consisting of unique digital identification, payments system and data exchange layers, It has been harnessed to foster innovation and competition, expand markets, close gaps in financial inclusion, boost government revenue collection and improve public expenditure efficiency. In the paper's view, India's journey in developing a world-class DPI highlights powerful lessons for other countries embarking on their own digital transformation, in particular a design approach that focuses on shared building blocks and supporting innovation across the ecosystem.

The BIS Innovation Hub and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority have launched the second phase of Project Aurum. Phase 1.0 tested the feasibility of a technological stack that integrates a wholesale interbank system and a retail e-wallet. Phase 2.0 will now focus on how to enhance privacy for retail central bank digital currencies (CBDC). It will explore several privacy-enhancing technologies, including pseudonymization and zero knowledge proofs, and test how increasing privacy affects the performance and compliance of a system.

"Emtech, an African provider of central banking infrastructure, introduced its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Innovation kit last month. The kit caters to fintechs and financial service providers interested in experimenting with solutions and business models based on digital currencies pioneered by central banks."