BIG NEWS

Singapore dollar on ETH
Singapore is pushing ahead with its investigation into the use of a tokenised dollar on a distributed ledger for inter-bank payments. First unveiled in November, Project Ubin saw the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) team up with a consortium of banks and R3 to see how DLT can be used for the clearing and settlement of payments and securities, specifically the use of a tokenised form the Singapore dollar on a distributed ledger.
The work built on a similar Bank of Canada-led and R3-backed effort, called Project Jasper, which used a digital currency to enable interbank payments.

In a report on the Singapore effort, Deloitte says that the first six week phase of Ubin was a success, building a "working interbank transfer prototype on a private ethereum network".

While the Bank of Canada recently said that it has concluded that DLT is not ready to support an interbank payments system, MAS is pushing ahead with its investigation. The central bank thinks that the technology can improve domestic securities transactions, offering delivery-vs-payment settlement in cases where it is not already available.

And Ubin is now into its second phase, working in two areas: making the fixed income securities trading and settlement cycle more efficient through DLT; and conducting cross border payments using central bank digital currency.

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