Many of us remember when it was announced that the Riksbank would start the project of introducing a digital currency, the so-called e-krona. But what has happened since the start in 2017, and is the project still alive?
It seems that the project is alive, whether it also thrives or not, time will tell. But I absolutely believe in a digital currency and think it’s cool that Sweden takes some form of “leader hat” here and drives on. There are certainly other nations that have similar projects underway so we will see how it all develops.
The latest I caught up now is that the technical platform for managing the e-krona will initiate the next phase, which is to test the platform against external systems. This is done together with TietoEvry and Handelsbanken in a joint sub-project where it is about a test environment that will send and receive data to see how everything fits together. The goal is to learn how the e-krona works outside the hitherto internal environment. In the end, these external players such as banks, etc. are super important for the e-krona’s ecosystem to work.
The basis for the e-krona’s platform is still the blockchain technology DLT which was presented in April. Simply explained about blockchain, this means (just like for Bitcoin) that information about eg transactions, ownership, etc. is not stored in a traditional database at the Riksbank in a central environment, but is distributed and stored by everyone who participates in blockchain.
