The central bank of the Netherlands will continue to experiment with the blockchain, but its current findings are “not so positive,” according to the director of bank payments. The financial edition of The Banker reported comments on May 1.
Petra Khilkema, director of payment and market infrastructures at De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), argues that the use of new technologies, such as the blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), will be a key focus in the DNB payment strategy for 2018-2021.
Khilkema urged central banks to continue to develop and invest in new technologies to figure out how to use them safely. Expressing confidence in the high potential of distributed accounting technology (DLT) applications in cross-border payments, the head of DNB still stated that innovation was needed.
Hilkema also outlined a number of problems identified by the DLT, based on the experience of the blockchain-related bank over the past three years. As such, the Dutch central bank was faced with DLT fakes, such as lack of capacity, inefficiency caused by high energy consumption and the lack of full confidence that the payment was completed, the article notes.
To date, the bank has developed and evaluated four prototypes based on the DLT.
Last year, Khilkema said that cryptocurrencies are not real money, but the bank does not plan to ban them.
Earlier this year, the Minister of Finance of the Netherlands Pete Hoekstra received an official consultation, suggesting the adoption of a system for the licensing of crypto services.
