Roxe hires former IMF economist to lead Bitcoin-backed CBDC project

[ad_1]

Global payments network Roxe has recruited a seasoned economist from the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, to help lead its central bank digital currency project backed by Bitcoin hashrate (BTC).

Andreas Jobst, whose career spans the IMF, World Bank and Bermuda Monetary Authority, has been appointed Roxes’ chief currency economist, the company said on Wednesday. Jobst will be responsible for helping evolve the Roxes CBDC Plus program and the payment network, which allows countries to issue new primary or secondary fiat currencies backed by the computing power of Bitcoin.

Jobs’ most recent appointment to the IMF was in an unspecified role in his European department, where he served for two and a half years. He was also senior economist for the same department between 2014 and 2016.

The CBDC program is primarily aimed at developing countries struggling with high inflation, fiscal imbalances and exchange rate volatility. Countries that have dollarized their economies have effectively transferred monetary policy to the United States Federal Reserve, creating new vulnerabilities.

Global central banks are actively exploring CBDCs, with some countries, such as China, being much further along the development curve. However, most of CBDC’s projects focus on digitizing their fiat currencies with the aim of streamlining access to legal tender, strengthening oversight and tracking of transactions. Roxe, on the other hand, is developing a CBDC which is backed by a standardized unit of Bitcoins hashrate. This strategy could allow nations to adopt Bitcoin’s solid money principles in their monetary policy, as reserve generation would be based on hashrate rather than arbitrary decisions.

Related: Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa Launch Joint CBDC Pilot Project

To date, five countries have successfully deployed CBDCs and all are located in the Caribbean region. As Cointelegraph recently reported, Nigeria’s CBDC pilot project is also expected to be implemented in the coming weeks.

[ad_2]