Swedish bankers worried about plans to launch digital currency E-Krona
Swedish banks have raised concerns about the launch of the e-krona digital currency offered by the local central bank. They fear it could negatively impact their industry.
As Sweden is the least country in the world to use cash, Riksbank is considering introducing digital payments using e-krona. Late last year, Minister for Financial Markets Per Bolund said that the Riksbank finance committee had begun an analysis of the country's digital currency transition prospects, and this study would be completed in November 2022.
But local bankers believe that this approach will fundamentally change the way the banking system works. One potential problem is the possibility of people transferring their money from deposit accounts to e-krona, which could leave banks without funds, forcing them to rely on the wholesale markets for liquidity.
Financial director of the corporate bank SEB Masih Yazdi believes that this option will jeopardize financial stability, since the banks will go into debt and, possibly, become unprofitable.
Another question is how the central bank will manage the new money. Rikard Erikson, an advisor to the Swedish Bankers' Association, is interested in whether Riksbank will be able to lend funds to banks to compensate for the lack of deposits. This option could mean that mortgages and corporate loans may be influenced by the central bank's risk appetite.
In addition, the central bank will move beyond monetary policy into areas such as privacy. This is because the blockchain-based digital crown will be tracked (as opposed to cash).
However, the central bank is set to launch the project. Last October, Riksbank CEO Stefan Ingves called on the Swedish government to rethink its legal tender concept and draft legislation to make way for e-krona.
“Digital government money, issued by Riksbank e-krona, will be used as legal tender,” Ingves said.
Known stolen BTC dropped by 92%
The number of BTC stolen, which was publicly reported in 2020, decreased to 4,472 coins or 0.02% of the circulating supply of the digital asset. The new figure speaks of a 92% drop from the 56,870 coins discussed in 2019.
Taking into account the current rate of the oldest cryptocurrency ($ 34,160 at the time of preparation of the text), we can say that the theft of these digital coins in 2020 led to losses that are equivalent to more than $ 152 million.The similar indicator in 2019 was equivalent to about $ 1.9 billion.
As the data shared by Casa CTO Jameson Lopp shows, this significant decrease in the number of reported thefts means that "the security of bitcoin appears to be improving," writes news.bitcoin.
The CTO also clarifies the meaning of the term “stolen” in the context of BTC theft reports. He replies that in this case it is considered stolen when “one day you go to check your wallet, but there is no money there”. In his opinion, it would be possible to count the viruses that steal secret keys, however, these types of theft in the end "are more difficult to combine because they are usually small-scale and not covered in the news."
If you examine the data provided by Jameson Lopp, you can see that the darknet site Empire Market was hit hardest. In 2020, he reported the loss of 2,638 coins. The second place in this somewhat sad ranking goes to the victim of a major hack - the Kucoin exchange. The total number of coins stolen last year was 1008.
In addition, Cashaa (337 BTC), Exmo (307 BTC) and Livecoin (106 BTC) crypto exchanges also spoke about significant losses, which were publicly reported. The rest of the reported thefts are less than 100 coins.
According to published information, 2020 has the lowest rate in terms of the number of coins stolen. At the same time, 2014 is considered the worst year since a total of 678,262 coins were stolen in 12 months.
