The London Block Exchange (LBX) has announced its plans to launch a new cryptocurrency which will be pegged to the British pound.

The company, whose CEO is Benjamin Dives (pictured),  said it is “proud to announce that they are releasing their own stablecoin, LBXPeg, which will be tied to the value of pound sterling (GBP) held in an auditable UK bank account on a  1:1 basis.”

LBXPeg is required in the market “as although the appetite for stablecoins is growing, trust in current projects remains flat.”

In a statement, it points out many available stablecoin offerings are “inadequate for the needs of businesses, traders and consumers.”

It hopes to provide a product that they can trust to be managed in a correct and compliant manner.

Global scale

LBXPeg will allow users to transfer the digital equivalent of GBP quickly, easily and on a global scale through a decentralised network.

It will make the transfer of money traceable and trustless and, as such, has a wide range of use cases; from payments to merchants to a smart contract-based distribution of dividends for a company’s shareholders.

The exchange will be initially utilising the Ethereum blockchain to develop, distribute and manage LBXPeg as the platform is transparent, efficient and close to reaping the benefits of its upcoming scaling solutions.

The new cryptocurrency will be an ERC-621 token – building upon the ERC-20 standard – which will grant the required flexibility in the total supply to match the quantity of GBP held in the segregated bank account.

LBXPeg will also be issued on other blockchains where compliance controls can be maintained.

‘Scope and stability’

After LBXPeg’s initial release, LBX said it “will explore tying the product’s value to accounts which hold other fiat currencies – such as EUR and USD – to improve both its scope and stability.”

Earlier in the week the Goldman Sachs-backed cryptocurrency company Circle, became the first issuer of US Dollar Coin, a new stablecoin pegged to the dollar which it helped to develop.

There are believed to be 50 stablecoin projects currently in development.