A new study by the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance surprisingly indicates that central banks are upbeat about blockchain technology. Of every five central banks surveyed, one affirmed that they will deploy some form of blockchain technology for their operation in the next 24 months and about 40 percent admit that the technology will be in widespread use within the next 10 years.

This study was conducted as part of the Global Blockchain Benchmarking Study. The sample size comprised of 25 central banks with some being directly surveyed and the others included was based on their public statements about their blockchain policies.

A prominent reason why Central Banks have shown an interest in making use of the technology is for the purposes of issuing their own cryptocurrencies. Over 80% of the central banks stated that they were currently researching the technology for this reason.

Additionally, the permissioned ledger protocols are high on the list of protocols that the banks are interested in exploring, however other decentralized protocols such as Ethereum and Bitcoin also ranked fairly high in their consideration.

This statistics is quite impressive considering the very conservative nature of central banks. History has shown that central banks more-often-than-not are apprehensive of disruptive technology that intrudes the financial space – and it is actually notable in this survey where almost half of the banks said that they are yet to have a timeframe for the deployment of blockchain technology.

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