Diving into the complex world of crypto and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)

Welp, the weekend is finally here! But before you pack it in, we want to share some exciting news…

That’s right, we’re inviting you to our live panel discussion on CBDCs and cryptocurrency featuring Carolyn Wilkins, external member of the Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee and former Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, and Ether Capital’s CEO Brian Mosoff. The event will be moderated by Bloomberg’s Michael Regan who will also take your questions. 😎🙌

We’ll talk about what a CBDC looks like, how it can integrate into our existing financial systems, the difference between CBDCs and cryptocurrency, and challenges when it comes to global adoption and regulation. 💡💲

The panel will take place on Wednesday, February 16th from 12:00pm ET to 1:00pm ET — this is an event you won’t want to miss! Go here to sign up.

Honestly, we’re stoked Carolyn Wilkins has agreed to chat with us. And for those of you who may not know, in 2016 while serving as Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada, she helped launch the central bank’s flagship experiment with distributed ledger technology (aka blockchain) code-named Project Jasper. 🛠️

The project was a joint initiative between Payments Canada, the Bank of Canada and major Canadian banks. The goal was to simulate a blockchain-based wholesale payment system to better understand how central banks and financial institutions can complete interbank payments using this new technology. 🏦💱

We’re going to ask Wilkins more about Project Jasper during our panel discussion, so we’ll leave it there for now. Did we forget to mention to sign up? 😉

When it comes to volatility this is not our first rodeo. 🏇

Our CEO Brian Mosoff caught up with Saijal Patel, host of Strictly Money, earlier this week to share his perspective on the sharp selloff of cryptocurrencies and what new investors need to think about in the long-term. And, of course, the bull case for Ethereum and staking.

Our President & CFO Stefan Coolican was also in the spotlight this week. He was interviewed by New York Magazine about the recent pullback in the market and offers advice on how to stomach the volatility. 🎢

Brian Mosoff, CEO of Ether Capital, spoke at PI Financial’s Winter 2022 Crypto Conference earlier this week. He talked about EthCap’s overall business strategy including our plans to become a net accumulator of ether and generate an attractive yield by staking our assets. 🥩💰

Don’t worry if you missed it, the full recording is available online.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT released key findings on Thursday of their CBDC experiment dubbed Project Hamilton — and the results are promising. Research shows the code base for one of the two designs for a Fed-backed digital dollar is capable of handling 1.7 million transactions per second. According to MarketWatch, the throughput is 2.5 times the number of transactions Visa can handle on its network. NBD, right?

Wormhole — a popular decentralized crypto platform that offers bridges between multiple blockchains — is the apparent victim of a hack worth more than US$325 million. The crypto community raised alarm bells almost immediately when users spotted the suspicious activity. Wormhole is working to recoup the lost ETH and kudos to community members (warning: profanity in this Tweet) for calling out and heavily documenting the hacker’s nefarious actions. For those who gripe about blockchain calling it the “Wild West,” there are more allies in the space who will quickly defend the network and help protect users. 🐱‍💻

Want to know more about smart contract security? Ether Capital’s CTO Shayan Eskandari caught up with ConsenSys — a leading software provider for Ethereum — earlier this week to talk about building secure smart contract technology and important things to watch out for. Here’s a link to the recording.

Alberta is hoping to become the next thriving crypto metropolis 🏙️, according to Doug Schweitzer, Alberta’s minister of jobs, economy and innovation. “This is an area of huge disruption and we want to make sure we’re there in that market,” he said during an interview with BNN Bloomberg on Thursday. We tip our hats to Schweitzer as it’s great to see government officials express a keen interest and desire to support the industry. 💡

The industry is quickly evolving and there’s a lot of information to keep up with. That’s why we want to help!

Email us your questions at info@ethcap.co and we’ll respond to a couple in next week’s newsletter. We’ll also keep you anonymous! 🕵️‍♀️

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