Central Bank of England is testing Ripple!

The British central bank, Bank of England, is setting up a Fintech community and is presenting a proof of concept to improve cross-border payments using ripple.

The world is not just about Bitcoin and its Blockize crisis. For example, in the UK, there is the fact that in the face of the breakthrough, the mega-financial center London is concerned, because all the banks are emigrating to Frankfurt and the surrounding area (at least the Frankfurter Zeitung).

It is already possible that “the city” is forced by the Brexit to be innovative. But it can also be that the Brexit allows the city to be innovative at its own discretion. In any case, a press release from the Central Bank shows that one is more keen on experimenting at the highest level of British finance than in most of the central banks of the continent.

In the press release, the central bank announces two things: on the one hand, it is launching a “Fintech community”, which is to cooperate in the digitalization of the financial system, including the handling of “Distributed Ledger Technology” as a “blockchain”. Including financial companies, government institutions and associations. The members of the community are, so to speak, the link between the financial corporation and the central bank, in order to discuss the digitization on a regular basis.

More interesting than the community are two so-called “Proofs of Concept” presented by the central bank. Proof of Concept says that in the planning of a project the milestone has been reached, that one has a proof that the project is possible. For example, through a feasibility study or a prototype.

Firstly, the central bank has tested the MindBridge AI. This is an artificial, self-learning intelligence that is supposed to recognize anomalies in financial transactions and reports. This AI is fed with a small set of anonymized central bank regulation data to explore how artificial intelligence can help regulate. Say: the central bank breeds an artificial intelligence, which is to supervise the cash flows of the population.

Second – and so we are finally at the blockchain – the central bank is busy with ripple. The company is testing a prototype with Ripple, the company, which allows “interoperable payments via different account books and networks.” The Proof of Concept is dedicated to the synchronous movement of two different currencies. The central bank hopes to reduce settlement risks and improve speed and efficiency in cross-border payments. It is quite possible that the currency, which is relatively small in relation to the euro, is quite important as is the British pound.

So Ripple has a foot in the door to the British central bank. Ripple Labs is the company that develops and sells Ripple, the blockchain for the currency ripple as well as and especially for IOUs (promissory notes) for everything. Ripple has started relatively openly and is in itself a brilliant concept to store, exchange and transfer decentralized values ​​of all kinds. However, Ripple has always been centered to an extreme extent around Ripple, the company, and therefore as a kind of anti-bitcoin less popular than other Altcoins.

At the beginning, anybody could open a wallet on Ripple or even download it to switch on the Ripple-Blockchain to no matter what free. A few years later, however, Ripple was regulated, had to pay a severe penalty for violation of regulatory regulations, and has repositioned as a “blockchain for the banks”.

And since then, it seems to run. The company trumps with every new investment round, has already collected around 100 million dollars, continues to introduce new employees, and most importantly, more and more banks are becoming partners. No wonder Ripple basically makes it possible to send money globally almost free of charge in a regulated environment. And that, without giving control over the money flows to the customers, as would be the case with Bitcoin. And without most of the other things that make Bitcoin so interesting.