RScoin: A Bitcoin-Style Currency for Central Banks

Researchers have invented a Bitcoin-like system that could make digital cash more practical by allowing a central bank such as the Federal Reserve to control it. The system, RSCoin, was designed by researchers, at the suggestion of the U.K.’s central bank, the Bank of England. The bank began researching the idea of issuing digital currency early last year. Like Bitcoin, RSCoin uses cryptography to create a kind of digital cash that’s resistant to counterfeiting. RSCoin was presented at the Network & Distributed System Security Symposium in San Diego last month.