The Israel Securities Authority (ISA) is making plans to regulate the FinTech space, and will be looking at a long-term way to work with cryptocurrency in the country, a report says.
The CoinDesk report Monday (Feb. 14) says there will be a “hackathon” for FinTechs in Tel Aviv in March. The ISA will be looking at blockchain-based solutions to boost infrastructure for the securities and sovereign debt markets.
Anat Guetta, chairwoman of the ISA, told CoinDesk that the hackathon is being hosted because the ISA is now the leading regulator for FinTech in Israel.
“The main motivation behind the hackathon is to facilitate the transfer of technology from a developmental environment to applications in a large-scale live environment that may bring to light various technological, business and regulatory issues,” Guetta said.
She said the hackathon could also be a jumping-off point for “effective and high-standard” collaboration between actors in the financial system.
It will allow for meetings between the ISA, developers, tech firms and scholars.
Guetta spoke especially positively about the potential of blockchain technology, saying that the hackathon will look into the issuance of securities and government bonds, which have different requirements and need the involvement of other parties. The experiment will let the country look into the ways blockchain can be used in the future.
Meanwhile, Guetta said cryptocurrency needs a “holistic” regulatory framework to cover the various facets of the industry. There will also be a need for regulators to switch their approach and look more broadly to get ahead of new trends and coins.
In other news, the Bank of Israel was reported to be looking into rolling out a central bank digital currency (CBDC), PYMNTS wrote in January.
Read more: Bank of Israel Studies Potential of Digital Shekel
The bank is looking into the risks and benefits with stakeholders.
That said, it’s still only theoretical for now as there’s not enough information on issues like a digital token’s impact on the banking system.
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