By The World Bank and The International Monetary Fund recently joined forces to launch a private blockchain and a quasi-cryptocurrency as reported by the Financial Times on Friday 12 April.
According to the publication, the asset has been dubbed the “Learning Coin” and will only be available to those within the IMF & the World Bank. The Financial Times further explained that the coin has no real monetary value thus it’s not a real cryptocurrency.
In a nutshell, the Learning Coin was launched in a effort to conduct research into the technologies that are crypto and blockchain. Its app will serve as the hub where videos, blogs, presentations and other forms of research will be stored.
During the initial test phase, the staff at both the IMF and the World Bank will be eligible to earn coins for achieving certain milestones. Both institutions will allow their staff to redeem the assets they earn for some rewards, thus enabling them to learn how coins are utilized in real life.
As per a statement from the IMF, banks and regulators from around the world need to catch up with crypto technologies which are rapidly evolving. The FT quoted the IMF’s statement:
“The development of crypto-assets and distributed ledger technology is evolving rapidly, as is the amount of information (both neutral and vested) surrounding it. This is forcing central banks, regulators and financial institutions to recognize a growing knowledge gap between the legislators, policymakers, economists and the technology.”
Furthermore, once the test phase is complete, the World Bank and IMF might implement blockchain in order to launch smart contracts, combat money laundering and to ultimately enhance their level of transparency.
Back in April, Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director, stated that blockchain innovators have been causing waves within the traditional financial world and have a obvious impact on incumbent players. She further cited that the potential of blockchain-based technologies and assets are embraced by regulators and central banks, who have in the past few years began to realise its positive efforts and use cases.
That’s not to say that everyone has such a positive stance towards the technology. A World Bank official expressed a far more sceptical and negative point of view. As per a comment from Aanchal Anand, a Land Administration Specialist in the bank’s Global Land and Geospatial Unit, the ever-growing hype surrounding blockchain is not going away anytime soon and this is could cause unrealistic expectations.
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