The financial ecosystem is ripe for change and innovation, with digital assets presenting a whole new world of transactions conducted between governments, institutions, and individuals on a daily basis. As such, CBDCs can help facilitate innovation through public and private sector initiatives to help encourage more widespread development and interest.

The Central Bank of Iran (CBI) has successfully completed a pre-pilot phase in the development of Iran’s CBDC, according to an official statement by CBI’s research arm, the Monetary and Banking Research Institute (MBRI).

According to a recent tweet, Ripple is currently working on deploying private blockchains of the XRP Ledger (XRPL) code to be used by central banks in developing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and other similar use cases from Matt Hamilton, a former Principal Developer Advocate at Ripple Labs.

In a joint article published on 3rd February by the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) as well as Binance, the two institutions announced the launch of a pilot project for the virtual tenge.

Japan has taken a major step forward when it comes to stablecoins, with several notable banks testing stablecoin usage on Ethereum-compatible blockchains.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has announced several projects that will develop use cases for the eAUD, the central bank digital currency (CBDC) of Australia, during its testing phase.

Ripple has been forced to build quickly outside the U.S. due to regulatory headwinds.

Shenzhen city, China’s southeastern metropolis that connects the mainland to Hong Kong, has started to issue digital yuan hard wallets to Hong Kong tourists but demand has so far failed to meet expectations.

Justin Sun says he is “100% confident” that Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) will grant Huobi a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license.

A cryptocurrency researcher and former CIA analyst believes the United States government’s relatively slow start on Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) development may result in it losing grip on controlling the global financial system.