Dear Reader,

We are excited to share that the DEA team has grown! A warm welcome to Andrea Cubells Enguídanos and Conrad Kraft, who are DEA’s new Executive Directors. 

We are thrilled to announce further new institutional DEA members, namely the CBDC Think Tank, Polycrypt, and Alter5. The CBDC Think Tank is a group of experts such as bankers, researchers, academics, members of international financial institutions, and non-government organizations, who are interested in and passionate about the future of digital currencies and payments. Polycrypt is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing practical and unbiased information on application security by producing publications, methodology, and technologies in the field of web application security primarily for software developers, software testers, and security specialists. Alter5 is an open architecture platform to accelerate investments by institutional investors in sustainable alternative assets and provide developers with access to capital markets in a fully digital environment. Welcome to the DEA!

DEA News

• Recently, the ECB announced the members of the Digital Euro Market Advisory Group, a group of market experts that should advise with regard to the design and the distribution of a potential digital euro. We are thrilled to see that DEA expert Silvia Attanasio will be part of this advisory group. Congrats!
  
  
• The Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) Tracker has been updated and offers latest news on recently announced CBDC projects around the world. The DEA is a contributing organization of the CBDC Tracker, which is an open-source project aimed at providing a comprehensive information resource for world CBDC initiatives.
  
  
• The DEA podcast continues with three further episodes: 
  
  
• Episode 8 focuses on Italian Banking Association (ABI)’s Spunta project, a blockchain-based process using distributed ledger technologies for interbank reconciliation with Silvia Attanasio and Rita Camporeale, representatives of the Italian Banking Association (ABI), and Jonas Gross, Chairman of the DEA.
  
  
• Episode 9 discusses the options of privacy design, which degree of privacy is necessary for a Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), and provides further insights with Dr. Thomas Moser, Alternate Member of The Governing Board at The Swiss National Bank (SNB), Dr. Wolfram Seidemann, Chief Executive Officer, Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) Currency Technology GmbH, and DEA Chairman Jonas Gross. 
  
  
• Episode 10 explores a regulated internet of value, which would embody all types of tokenized assets and money in an ‘always on’, programmable and global network with Tony McLaughlin, Managing Director Transaction Banking at CitiBank, and DEA founding member Manuel Klein.

Besides these announcements, our monthly newsletter presents the most relevant upcoming events about digital money, and the most exciting news and publications from in- and outside the DEA community.

DEA Events

Please find below the upcoming events of the DEA and digital euro community:

• DEA Members Only Expert Talk (November 24, 2021, 18:00 - 19:00 CET)

We warmly invite you to our first DEA members only event that will deliver opportunities to gather valuable insights, ask critical questions, and learn from each other and together, all in a trustful and collaborative environment. It is our honor to start this private series with Dr. Markus Franke, partner at cLabs, which is a supporting member of the DEA. Markus will explain the stability mechanism that cLabs uses for its several stable coins (whitepaper) and will discuss further relevant questions around the cLabs/CELO stablecoins, e.g., the cEUR. 

• SAVE THE DATE! DEA Event: Digital Assets and the Digital Euro (December 2, 2021, 17:00 - 18:30 CET)

Benefits offered by the digitization of financial assets brought about opportunities to integrate blockchain technology into the security offerings, such as blockchain-based bonds by financial institutions. With the DELPHI (Delivery vs. Payment Hybrid Initiative) project, The Austrian Central Bank explored the appropriateness of blockchain technology for issuing and settling digital bonds in real time using a wholesale CBDC. In this webinar, Johannes Duong, Treasurer at the Austrian Central Bank (OeNB), will provide a keynote speech on the DELPHI project followed by a panel discussion about how digital euro will support the digitization of financial assets by Simon Seiter, Head of Digital Assets at Hauck & Aufhäuser, and Maximilian Forster, Co-founder & Chief Business Officer at CashOnLedger. The online event will be moderated by our DEA Chairman Jonas Gross. We will share details for the event registration soon.

• The Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Summit (Call for Proposals and Panels)

The Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Summit (January 5-7, 2022), a free and online event, will provide the latest research and best practices for those interested in cryptocurrencies in their professional and personal lives. Submit your presentation or panel proposals by December 1, 2021. 

DEA Job Opportunities

Please find below the job opportunities by the DEA members:

• DEA supporting member Bundesdruckerei-Gruppe is looking for a senior product manager/product owner digital currency. The Bundesdruckerei works on innovative products and technology to keep data and identities safe. Sounds interesting? Read the job description. 

Digital Money News

Please find below interesting news and publications on digital money from outside the DEA community:

Publications:

• Central Bank Digital Currencies: Motives, Economic Implications and the Research Frontier, by Raphael Auer, Jon Frost, Leonardo Gambacorta, Cyril Monnet, Tara Rice and Hyun Song Shin. The authors provide a summary of the growing literature on CBDCs on the microeconomic considerations related to operational architectures, technologies and privacy, and the macroeconomic implications for the financial system, financial stability and monetary policy.
  
  
• Central Bank Digital Currencies: A Monetary Anchor for Digital Innovation. Speech by Fabio Panetta (Member of the Executive Board of the ECB). Dr. Panetta has given a speech about the importance of central bank money as a monetary anchor for payments and the conditions for success of a digital euro.
  
  
• Central Bank Digital Currencies, Cryptocurrencies, and Privacy: What Experiments Tell Us, by Emanuele Borgonovo Stefano Caselli, Alessandra Cillo, Donato Masciandaro, Giovanni Rabitti. Using some laboratory experiments, the authors  show that anonymity matters and increases the overall appeal of a medium of payment.
  
  
• President’s Working Group on Financial Markets Releases Report and Recommendations on Stablecoins, by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets (PWG), along with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), released a report on stablecoins to call for Congress to enact sweeping new laws to regulate stablecoin issuers and try to address risks presented by stablecoins.

News:

• Mastercard is Preparing its Infrastructure for the Deployment of CBDCs, on Cointelegraph. One of the world's largest consumer payment processors has increased its interest in both the private digital currencies and the CBDC sector.
  
  
• Banca d’Italia and Deutsche Bundesbank Discuss Initiatives for DLT-based Asset Settlement in Central Bank Money. Banca d’Italia and Deutsche Bundesbank participated in a joint workshop to share experiences on the settlement in central bank money of assets exchanged on emerging and innovative market solutions based on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) using the programmable features available on DLT-based systems.
  
  
• Digital yuan pilot surges to 140 million, 10% of population, on Ledger Insights. The Director General of China’s Central Bank Digital Currency Research Institute, shared the latest statistics on the digital yuan trials during the Hong Kong Fintech Festival.

If you would also like to see your work, research, paper, etc. shared through the DEA channels, feel free to apply as an expert or fellow to receive our monthly research questionnaire. We will evaluate your submission and, if suitable, share it through our website, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts as well as in the next newsletter.

That was all from us for now. We are looking forward to hearing from you. 

If you have any feedback on our newsletter, please feel free to reach out to us.

The DEA Team