On Wednesday, the financial infrastructure provider SWIFT said that it had found a solution to a particularly challenging issue for central bank digital currency (CBDC): coordinating transactions among different blockchains. SWIFT Planning for Eight Months According to Kenneth Goodwin, head of regulatory and institutional affairs at Blockchain Intelligence Group, the move is one sign that central banks are finally beginning to carefully plan out the enormous, expensive infrastructure needed to roll out digital currencies backed by nations. The SWIFT plan has been in development for at least eight months. Goodwin, who collaborates with the Boston and New York Federal Reserves’ Project Hamilton, an economic research tank, said SWIFT’s size lends credibility to its strategy. According to Goodwin, the difficult decision of competing with a crypto-native rival like Bitcoin’s Lightning Network or integrating CBDCs with SWIFT’s existing payment rails is one reason why the research has taken so long. The CBDC Adoption Plan The financial messaging system said in a statement, “SWIFT has successfully shown that Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and tokenised assets can move seamlessly on existing financial infrastructure – a major milestone towards enabling their smooth integration into the international financial ecosystem.” The team’s two studies revealed that digital assets and currencies might coexist peacefully on the network ...
