Bank of England begins building Britcoin team

The Bank of England has opened recruitment for staff to oversee the development of its proposed central bank digital currency.

The UK central bank wants to create a team of up to 30 people to oversee the project, according to a report by the Times.

“A team of 30 seems like quite a significant resource to focus on the digital pound,” Ian Taylor, an adviser to the trade association CryptoUK, told the Times. “It shows the impact it would have, and that the bank are serious about it.”

Ian Taylor, CryptoUK

The Bank in late March posted openings for a digital pound solution architect “to explore the technology design and architecture options for a potential retail CBDC”, and a digital pound security architect, whose role will be “to explore and develop secure technology design and architecture options for a potential retail CBDC”.

The job ads state: “HM Treasury and the Bank of England have recently issued a Consultation Paper setting out an assessment of the motivations and design choices for a potential digital pound, alongside a Technology Working Paper which outlines our emerging thinking on CBDC technology. These papers signal that our work will now move onto a design phase, which will look at the technology and policy requirements for a digital pound.”

In February, Bank of England deputy governor Jon Cunlifffe told a committee of MPs that a digital pound has a better than 50/50 chance of coming to fruition.

“These are big projects… this would be a very serious thing that would have to be resilient, fraud-proof, secure,” Cunliffe said. “If we just wait until we say OK now we think it’s needed, we will be five years behind.”

Via: https://www.finextra.com/