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Today digital currency technology firm Bitt announced that it was taking on the central bank digital currency (CBDC) team of Criteo. Two of the Criteo CBDC team founders, James Shinn and Erik Bethel, are joining as Executive Director and Head of Business Development, respectively.
Amongst other projects, Bitt is known for the DCash Eastern Caribbean digital currency project and Nigeria’s eNaira CBDC, which launched last October.
Meanwhile, Criteo is a substantial company, but its primary business is in the ecommerce and marketing sectors. It entered Singapore’s Global CBDC Challenge last year and was one of the three winners, alongside big names in the sector, central bank provider Giesecke+Devrient and a joint project by ConsenSys and Visa.
As a result of its win, Criteo signed a dozen central banks as clients. Jim Shinn said that Criteo is re-focusing on its core e-commerce business. We contacted the company to clarify the reasons for its withdrawal from CBDC work but didn’t receive a response in time for publication.
“We (Bitt) are reaching out to all the central banks with which Criteo had an MOU. Criteo management was gracious enough to advise each central bank that the CBDC team was moving to Bitt and copied Bitt on those communications,” Shinn told Ledger Insights via email.
Other members of the Criteo CBDC team are joining Bitt alongside Shinn and Bethel.
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