This is some news I have expected for some time now and finally released yesterday:
https://lonestarwhitehouse.blogspot.com/2017/10/ibm-announces-partnership-with-klickex.html
I first met the CEO of KlickEx (Robert Bell) back in 2014 by email doing research for articles. Even back then he explained to me pretty much this same concept as something to watch for over time. The significance is that this is likely the first step in a process that could lead to a new digital global reserve currency (to replace the US dollar). It is likely to proceed in stages with the first central bank digital currency showing up in 2018 (probably in Singapore). Soon after, several more smaller central banks would adopt it to issue their own central bank digital currencies. The bigger central banks (and the IMF) will observe this to see how well it works and how well the public receives it. So the South Pacific is kind of the testing ground for the rollout.
At some point, if it succeeds, it could eventually lead to the "digital version of the SDR" that IMF Director Lagarde recently mentioned for the first time. My expectation based on the input I get is for this process to take a number of years to unfold unless some kind of new global crisis were to create a sense of global urgency to speed up the process. But this is a significant first step because it is the first time anyone has figured out how to make blockchain work in the existing banking system and be able to scale it up to handle the huge volume of transactions required for a national (or global) currency system. Robert Bell worked with IBM on this project to help figure out how to make that happen since he has been running a system that can do real time cross border (and cross currency) transactions in the South Pacific for many years.
https://lonestarwhitehouse.blogspot.com/2017/10/ibm-announces-partnership-with-klickex.html
I first met the CEO of KlickEx (Robert Bell) back in 2014 by email doing research for articles. Even back then he explained to me pretty much this same concept as something to watch for over time. The significance is that this is likely the first step in a process that could lead to a new digital global reserve currency (to replace the US dollar). It is likely to proceed in stages with the first central bank digital currency showing up in 2018 (probably in Singapore). Soon after, several more smaller central banks would adopt it to issue their own central bank digital currencies. The bigger central banks (and the IMF) will observe this to see how well it works and how well the public receives it. So the South Pacific is kind of the testing ground for the rollout.
At some point, if it succeeds, it could eventually lead to the "digital version of the SDR" that IMF Director Lagarde recently mentioned for the first time. My expectation based on the input I get is for this process to take a number of years to unfold unless some kind of new global crisis were to create a sense of global urgency to speed up the process. But this is a significant first step because it is the first time anyone has figured out how to make blockchain work in the existing banking system and be able to scale it up to handle the huge volume of transactions required for a national (or global) currency system. Robert Bell worked with IBM on this project to help figure out how to make that happen since he has been running a system that can do real time cross border (and cross currency) transactions in the South Pacific for many years.
