Exploring Blockchain Technology with Colombia’s Central Bank: Ripple’s Partnership

The Banco de la República and Ripple’s Pilot Program

The Banco de la República, Colombia’s central bank, is collaborating with Peersyst and Ripple to test out blockchain technology on the XRP ledger.

The Colombian Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies (MinTIC) will be responsible for the supervision of the project, which will utilize Ripple’s freshly launched central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform.

An announcement made on June 15 indicated that the pilot program would continue through 2023, and that its purpose was to demonstrate the technology’s usefulness to the public.

The XRP ledger CDBC platform is also the foundation for similar pilot initiatives in Hong Kong, Bhutan, Palau, and Montenegro.

Ripple’s sustained expansion is taking place despite the legal issues arising from a lawsuit brought against them by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2020.

The SEC has accused Ripple of selling $1.3 billion worth of unregistered securities in the form of its XRP token. However, Ripple insists that XRP is not a security and that the SEC did not provide them with any prior notice or warning.

The SEC vs. Ripple Lawsuit: All the Information You Require

As recently reported by Cointelegraph, the company has asserted that it has spent $200 million defending itself from the lawsuit. Although there is no definite answer to when the trial will conclude, it is generally thought that the release of the so-called “Hinman documents” could have an impact on the remaining legal proceedings.

The documents associated with William Hinman, the former head of the SEC’s corporate finance division, refer to internal SEC communications concerning a 2018 address he gave. In his address, Hinman remarked that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) may be classified as securities initially, but could potentially be categorized as commodities once they become sufficiently decentralized.

At the time, records kept by the SEC showed that the commission was worried that Hinman’s remarks might make it “challenging for the agency to adopt a different stance on Ether in the future.”