Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen encouraged her fellow central bankers to accelerate their studies of new financial technologies, specifically mentioning bitcoin, the blockchain, and other distributed ledgers, according to the trade group whose conference she attended.
The June 1 event in Washington, attended by representatives from more than 90 central banks, was closed to the press. The Chamber of Digital Commerce, which organized the conference, summarized her remarks in a press release Monday.
"The fact that the words bitcoin and blockchain were spoken by chairwoman Yellen in a positive context highlights the importance of emerging financial technology," said Perianne Boring, president of the Chamber.
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Comments by JPMorgan Chase's Jamie Dimon have added fuel to the long-discussed idea of a national database that would make it easier for banks to vet customers for anti-money-laundering and other risks.
June 3 -
The distributed ledger technology has an answer for updating every core function of the antiquated financial system.
May 12 -
While bitcoin is viewed as "secret currency," the technology behind the cryptocurrency is immensely useful to financial services companies in preventing hacking.
May 11 -
Most of the largest banks are participating in industrywide blockchain standard-setting activities, trying to determine which use cases would improve upon existing technology. That's backward, says Chain, a startup whose product is already being used by banks.
May 5
The Fed declined to comment.
A conference agenda listed several speakers from Fed including Yellen, as well as representatives from Goldman Sachs, Nasdaq and the International Monetary Fund.
