By Landon Manning
From January 21 to 24, 2020, the World Economic Forum (WEF) took some first steps to formally establish a coherent international framework for the world’s governments to regulate the cryptocurrency industry.
Held in Davos, Switzerland, WEF announced this work on its website, claiming that it plans to create a “Global Consortium on Cryptocurrency Governance,” which will include a wide variety of different state and nonstate actors, including representatives from NGOs, academics, technical experts, national regulatory bodies and a mix of private and state-run banking institutions.
This potential international collaboration toward cryptocurrency governance from WEF is part of what appears to be a growing trend. In January 2020, the Bank of England announced a project to look into the feasibility and many relevant details of potentially operating a state-backed crypto asset. Working with the central banks of Canada and Japan outside of Europe, as well as both the European Central Bank and national banks of Sweden and Switzerland (both outside of the European Union), the British-led group plans to explore this hypothetical new breed of cryptocurrencies through a global approach.
Representatives from all of these financial institutions attended the conference at Davos. In addition to the various private institutions cooperating in this working group at WEF, government financial regulators from Singapore and South Africa also participated.
Some of the forum’s organizers have also shown public support for blockchain technology. Sheila Warren, the organization’s head of blockchain and distributed ledger technology, has stated that one of the goals of the conference has been drafting a “Blockchain Bill of Rights” and then convincing various world governments to enshrine certain privacy protections for blockchain technology users into law.
With the forum’s annual conference now over, it is time to see what exactly the long-term implications of the Crypto Consortium will be.
Many functionaries, within participating bodies as well as WEF itself, spoke highly of the project in its announcement, with the forum’s founder Klaus Schwab claiming that cryptocurrency “is a key area of interest for the Forum” and that “we hope that hosting this consortium will catalyse the conversations necessary to inform a robust framework of governance for global digital currencies.”
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