Utility Settlement Coin to team up with Adhara to develop digital money

Adhara was behind Project Khokha, which used enterprise blockchain client Quorum to see how zero-knowledge proofs performed with the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).

The move is one of only a handful of public overtures by Fnality, the company that oversees the development of USC. Fnality raised USD 64.5 million in June 2019 from 14 shareholders including banking corporations like Barclays, Santander, BNY Mellon, ING and others. To date, USC’s only known technology partner was London-based Clearmatics Technologies.

The USC is commercial bank money, as opposed to a pure central bank digital currencies (CBDC), which is issued and backed by the domestic central bank and carries sovereign risk. However, the design of USC allows it to carry some of the

characteristics of central bank money because the cash collateral backing the USC is held at a domestic central bank, CoinDesk continues. Fnality’s plan is to represent five currencies on its blockchain – USD, euro, JPY, GBP and CAD – and solve the so-called ‘cash on ledger’ problem, allowing wholesale banking transactions to happen instantly, cross-border and 24/7.