A new foundation bidding to build a non-anonymous, reserve-backed digital currency has added the chairman of JPMorgan Chase International and a Nobel Laureate to its advisory council.
The Swiss-based Saga Foundation is looking to reimagine cryptocurrencies, addressing the three main concerns expressed about the likes of Bitcoin: anonymity, lack of underlying value, and high volatility.
Saga (SGA) will not only not be anonymous, it has been designed with a "tamed volatility mechanism", helping it to become a store of value and a medium of exchange. It will also be backed by a variable fractional reserve that is anchored to the IMF’s SDR. These reserves will be deposited with regulated banks through algorithms in the underlying smart contract system.
The foundation has secured backing from some big names in the finance industry, including Jacob Frenkel, chairman of JPMorgan Chase International, Myron Scholes, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, and Emin Gün Sirer, co-director at the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Smart Contracts at Cornell University.
Says Frenkel: “While Blockchain technologies have gained growing acceptance, encryptic currencies have raised public policy concerns, since they are anonymous, unbacked, and are highly volatile. I share these concerns and see great value in Saga’s vision to address them properly."