Roxe, a global payment network, has hired Andreas Jobst, a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist, to lead its central bank digital currency project backed by Bitcoin’s (BTC) hashrate.
The company on Wednesday, September 8, announced Jobst as Roxe’s chief currency economist.
According to CoinTelegraph, Jobst, whose career spans the IMF, World Bank, and Bermuda Monetary Authority, will be tasked with helping to scale Roxe’s CBDC Plus Program and payment network, which allows countries to issue new primary or secondary fiat currencies backed by the computational power of Bitcoin.
Jobst’s most recent appointment at the IMF was an unspecified role in its European department, where he served for two-and-a-half years. He also served as the senior economist for the same department between 2014 and 2016.
Roxe is developing a CBDC that is backed by a standardized unit of Bitcoin’s hashrate. This strategy could allow nations to adopt Bitcoin’s sound money principles into their monetary policy since the generation of reserves would be based on hashrate rather than arbitrary decisions.
It is worthy to note the CBDC program is primarily geared toward developing countries struggling with high inflation, fiscal imbalances, and foreign exchange volatility.
Most CBDC projects are focused on digitizing their fiat currencies for the purpose of streamlining access to legal tender, strengthening oversight, and monitoring of transactions.
Just as five countries in the Caribbean have successfully deployed their CBDC projects, DeFi-Planet had earlier reported that Nigeria, a country in Sub-Saharan Africa had tapped a Barbados-based FinTech, Bitt Inc. for the deployment of its own digital currency, E-Naira.
If you would like to read more interesting case studies like this, follow DeFi Planet on Twitter and LinkedIn.