Brazil Stock Exchange (B3), one of the world’s few exchanges trading Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds, is exploring ways to provide data inputs for the country’s central bank digital currency, or CBDC.
Luis Kondic, managing director of listed products and data at B3, claimed that the stock exchange is considering providing oracles to bridge external data with Brazil’s projected CBDC, the digital real. The executive provided his remarks at a CBDC-related online event hosted by the Central Bank of Brazil on Thursday, Cointelegraph Brasil reported.
“We are looking at it and evaluating the best ways to interact and participate in this ecosystem. However, I believe this is something for us to evolve and move forward to meet the future needs of this programmable cash payments system,” Kondic said.
Oracles are a crucial part of smart contracts, providing data feeds from external sources to execute smart contacts under specific conditions. According to Kondic, smart contracts can potentially enable several benefits for the Brazilian CBDC, including implementing automatic profit distribution based on B3’s oracle inputs.
“There are numerous applications, such as, for example, you can schedule the money to be distributed among shareholders automatically according to the company’s profits; schedule the money for automatic settlement of issuance and payment of receivables or pay suppliers automatically within a distribution chain,” the executive explained.
Other banks like the Reserve Bank of New Zealand have also outlined potential smart contract applications for CBDCs, including automatic execution of rent or bill payments.
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The news comes amid the Brazilian central bank progressing with the CBDC development after forming a dedicated group to study the crypto industry in October 2020. On Sept. 9, the Central Bank of Brazil issued a presentation stating that the authority is studying potential smart contracts and decentralized finance applications as part of its CBDC investigation.
The regulator expects to roll out the first digital real pilots in 2023 after coming up with a proof-of-concept in 2022.
Additional reporting by Lucas Caram.