Crypto-friendly banks are increasing in number throughout the United States after years of avoidance.

Following the World Gold Council’s (WGC) third-quarter report that shows central banks purchased a record amount of gold, data released by the WGC shows that central banks are buying more gold during 2022’s fourth quarter. Statistics show that the gold held by the world’s central banks is at the highest level since 1974.

These are 1.7 billion adults around the globe that are completely ‘unbanked’, 980 million are women.

“Instead of issuing a retail [central bank digital currency], central banks could support stablecoins by allowing them to be backed one-for-one with balances in a central bank account,” said Antoine Martin, a financial stability advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

In the first two decades of the 21st Century, the world’s central banks pumped outrageous amounts of money into the financial markets.

Leading global banks kicked off a 12-week pilot together with the New York Federal Reserve.  The so-called regulated liability network will serve as a ground for participants to experiment with wholesale digital asset transaction and settlements. The project will only use simulated data, the New York Fed said.

Mu Changchun, director of the Digital Currency Research Institute of the People's Bank of China, said today at the 2022 Hong Kong Fintech Week that the multilateral central bank Digital Currency Bridge project uses fintech tools to fully reuse existing infrastructure and realize connectivity between different central bank digital currency systems and traditional financial market infrastructure.