I think digital currency in the CBDC (central bank digital) sense is that its "programmable money." For example my understanding is that the beta testers (my term) for the e-yuan literally have 30 days to spend the currency through alipay or whatever they're using or it disappears forever. I'm sort of looking at it as a combo of regular money and smart contracts but thats just me.
Interestingly Jim Bianco (who you may see regularly on old-financial media) argues that all of these currencies will fail in favor of the defi stuff that's already being spun up. For example by the time fed coin is even being tested (2025) the technologies behind cryptos will be so mature that the tech the us fed is using (from 2015) will be dead on arrival
In 2015 or so, I was really surprised to hear that the Australian Stock Exchange was going full-steam ahead with a blockchain-based settlement platform. From memory, they were targeting 2020 or so for a full rollout.
Just checked and this has now been pushed back to 2023.
I know that there's been a lot of improvement since then, but once you reach a certain size, things just move very slowly. It's less about the tech, and more about the pace at which stakeholders get on board.
as far as I can tell this is what inx.co is doing and they are about to launch. interesting company sounds like they have lofty plans and an executive board that has some interesting people (former nyse and tsx execs). both a platform for 'traditional' crypto but also building an exchange for fully regulated 'digital assets' a la digital representations of stocks etc
Interestingly Jim Bianco (who you may see regularly on old-financial media) argues that all of these currencies will fail in favor of the defi stuff that's already being spun up. For example by the time fed coin is even being tested (2025) the technologies behind cryptos will be so mature that the tech the us fed is using (from 2015) will be dead on arrival