Top financiers and economists team up for new cryptocurrency

Swiss-based Saga Foundation will aim to tackle to main criticisms of virtual currencies

A group of finance executives and economists has teamed up to create a cryptocurrency that aims to tackle the main criticisms of virtual money — namely, its anonymity, lack of underlying value and high volatility.
The Saga Foundation, a Swiss non-profit organisation, plans to create Saga, which it said will be the first non-anonymous blockchain-based digital currency. Blockchain is a type of distributed ledger and is the technology that underpins virtual money.
Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin are attracting increasing amounts of criticism. On Thursday, the UK Treasury, Financial Conduct Authority and Bank of England said they would launch a joint investigation into the risks and rewards of digital currencies, less than a month after the BoE's governor Mark Carney warned that virtual money is "failing".
Meanwhile, high-profile financial services executives, including hedge fund manager Paul Singer and Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, have issued warnings on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
The main gripes against virtual currencies are that they are anonymous — there is no way of tracking users and transactions — that they have no underlying value and that they are highly volatile — bitcoin, for example, rocketed from $1,000 in January 2017 to $20,000 in December, before plunging at the start of this year.

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