CoinMarketCap, Feb 28: Think There's Gonna Be a Britcoin? Don't Hold Your Breath

The Bank of England has been accused of taking an "ambivalent and half-hearted" approach to the creation of a central bank digital currency. MPs criticized repeated delays when it came to the decision of whether to build "Britcoin." But deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe insisted that the U.K. isn't behind advanced major economies in weighing up whether a digital pound is worth it. He pushed back on the idea that the Bank of England was being ambivalent in its examination of a CBDC — and argued that the phrase "likely to be needed" was quite forward leaning. But when pushed on how likely a CBDC was on a scale of 1 to 10, he refused to give a specific answer, and merely said: "More than 5."

Sir Jon admitted that the Bank of England currently lacks the technical wherewithal to launch a central bank digital currency — but it's hoped that this will be fixed soon. And he was asked about the skeptical comments made by his boss, BoE Governor Andrew Bailey, who said he was not convinced of the problems "Britcoin" is trying to solve. Sir Jon replied by saying that he wasn't convinced that the U.K. currently has one of the advanced payments systems in the world — and insisted that a CBDC could have huge benefits for the economy and society. "This is about opening a new frontier for people to improve payments and the way in which money is used in how we transact," he told lawmakers in Westminster.

A new Coinbase poll suggests 50 million Americans now own crypto. While this number sounds impressive, it's pretty flat compared with the peak of the bull run in late 2020. The survey also revealed that two-thirds of Americans believe that the global financial system needs an overhaul, amid fears that it is unfairly skewed toward the interests of the most powerful. All of this comes as the exchange prepares to launch a public education campaign that aims to reach Americans "from all walks of life, and all around the country, about the role that crypto can play in supporting a broader effort to make the financial system more open, fairer, and faster for everyone." It'll be accompanied by ads that expose flaws in the fiat system.

Solana suffered yet another outage over the weekend, with the project admitting that the root cause of the downtime is still unknown. The disruption lasted for about 20 hours — prompting some on Twitter to call it "a piece of s***," and others to quip that it's more of a transaction killer than an Ethereum killer. Some were also left scratching their heads as to how this blockchain remains the 11th biggest in terms of market capitalization given how this has happened many times before. In a blog post, Solana explained that engineers debugging the issues facing the network had recommended that it should be restarted — and validators agreed with this request. A recent rollout of v1.14 was also reversed, returning the network to v.1.13.6.

One of the world's largest NFT brands has announced that it's launching a new collection on the Bitcoin blockchain. Yuga Labs is best known for creating Bored Ape Yacht Club — but until now, all of its collections have been based on the Ethereum network. TwelveFold is a collection of 300 artworks that will be inscribed on to satoshis, the term that's used to describe the smallest denomination of BTC. "Highly rendered 3D elements as well as hand-drawn features" will appear in each piece. In a blog post, the brand said: "All of these choices are a departure from what’s expected from Yuga. But, you know. F*** doing expected things." The company said Ordinals "felt like getting a glimpse of the 2017-era Ethereum NFT ecosystem."