WEF Launches Global Consortium for Crypto Governance

The World Economic Forum has created an international consortium to design a governance framework for cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins.

Announced Friday, the consortium seeks to bring together financial institutions, government representatives, developers and other members of the global community to determine what sort of governance around cryptocurrencies can best further the goal of financial inclusion.

Digital currencies are “a key area of interest for the Forum,” said WEF Founder and Chairman Klaus Schwab. The area “requires input across sectors, functions and geographies.”

“Building on our long history of public-private cooperation, we hope that hosting this consortium will catalyse the conversations necessary to inform a robust framework of governance for global digital currencies,” he said.

The new consortium has buy-in from a number of central banks from developing nations, as well as the Bank of England’s Mark Carney (who has opined on the potential of digital currencies before) and several non-governmental organizations.

David Marcus of the Libra Association, Joe Lubin of ConsenSys and Neha Narula of MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative also praised the effort in a press release.

The news comes just days after the WEF’s blockchain lead, Sheila Warren, and project specialist Sumedha Deshmukh outlined a “Blockchain Bill of Rights” created by the group. A group of central banks also announced last week that they would create a working group to evaluate use cases for the nascent technology.