Bank of England Develops Centralized Bitcoin Alternative RSCoin

Abstract: The Bank of England is working with researchers at University College London to develop a centralized alternative to Bitcoin, RSCoin . Bitcoin is a decentralized digital cryptocurrency, and the blockchain that records all transactions can be accessed and hosted by anyone. RSCoin uses encryption to prevent forgery and tampering, but its ledger system ( similar to blockchain ) is completely controlled by the Bank of England.

RSCoin was designed by Sarah Meiklejohn and George Danezis of University College London . Meiklejohn said that RSCoin 's centralized design allows the central bank to handle a large number of transactions, which is different from Bitcoin's 1MB block capacity, which limits the transaction speed.

Bitcoin transactions are transparent, but RSCoin transactions can be partially or completely anonymous. RSCoin is currently being tested using Amazon's cloud computing platform.