Carlo R.W. De Meijer Owner and Economist at MIFSA
Two years ago I wrote a blog about the plans of the European Central Bank (ECB) to introduce a digital euro. In that year the ECB decided to set up the Digital Euro project and started with the technical investigation phase, focussing initially on fundamental questions such as the technological functioning of the digital euro. Now we are two y
29 May 2023 /crypto Blockchain Observations
On 15 February the European Commission announced the launch of the pan-European Blockchain Regulatory Sandbox for innovative use cases involving Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT). The sandbox that was initially planned to become operational in 2021/22, now started on 14 April 2023. The sandbox comes amid reignited interest in blockchain techn...
30 April 2023
Last year September Ethereum blockchain entered a new phase in its Ethereum 2.0 journey. After launched the Beacon Chain in December 2020, a parallel blockchain which acts as consensus engine that runs on proof of stake, The Merge was concluded in September 2022 whereby the Beacon Chain and the Mainnet, the normal Ethereum blockchain, merged into ...
30 March 2023 /devops /crypto Blockchain Observations
Recently I read a very interesting and stimulating article in a Dutch newspaper. It was about the Community Currency named Sarafu that is used in Kenya’s rural communities thereby trying to solve the issue of proper circulation of finances. The Sarafu Network, is a so-called Community Inclusion Currency or CIC, yet only a few outside the country ...
27 February 2023 /inclusion /crypto Blockchain Observations
The collapse of crypto exchange FTX early November 2022 plunged the crypto markets into a crisis. This event sparked a wave of crypto-bankruptcies, failed investments and rapid collapses. The current situation is a mixture of concern and uncertainty with the future of the crypto markets. This has triggered regulators worldwide to come with stricte...
31 January 2023
Turning back from our almost one month stay during November in South Africa, our beloved travel country, I was heavily chocked by the events on the crypto markets. During our stay I had promised my wife not to follow the news in these areas. But looking at internet I read the various articles and blogs on the FTX crypto exchange collapse and the ne...
29 December 2022
Early October SWIFT launched two publications describing the results of two important experiments, one on interoperability and the other on tokenization. In these publications SWIFT has laid out its blueprint for a global central bank digital currency (CBDC) network following an 8-month experiment on different technologies and currencies. SWIFT t...
07 November 2022 /crypto Blockchain Observations
The future of the financial world will be digital. But it is becoming clear that this world will not be dominated by privately-issued crypto assets like crypto currencies such as Bitcoin or even stable coins. It is becoming all the more likely that it will be central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) that are digital versions of nation’s fiat money ...
30 September 2022
I am a music fan. Of all sorts, from classic, to pop, to etc. In the sixteenths I visited the National Jazz and Blues Festival in Plumpton South England. And there I saw Deep Purple for the first time. It was great. Recently I read that, notwithstanding the music industry is an incredibly big business, many artists still have a pover life. This whi...
15 August 2022 /crypto Blockchain Observations
Finally, after two years of intensive deliberations, EU legislators have reached a provisional agreement on its landmark Markets in Crypto Assets (MICA) directive, that is aimed to govern the crypto space in Europe for the years to come. The recent crypto market crash shows how highly risky and speculative crypto currencies are. It confirmed th
12 July 2022
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