The test program will last until 2023, and its goal is to show the general public how useful blockchain can be.

Colombia’s state bank, Banco de la Republica, is working with Peersyst and Ripple to test blockchain technology on the XRP ledger. 

The project, which will use Ripple’s newly released central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform, will be run by Colombia’s Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies (MinTIC).

An announcement from June 15 says that the pilot will last until 2023 and that its goal is to show people how useful the technology is:

“The goal of the third phase of MinTIC’s blockchain experiments will be to teach national and territorial public entities through interactive and collaborative real-world application experiments how blockchain technology’s speed, scalability, and transparency can completely change payment systems and data management.”

The XRP ledger CBDC platform is also used as the foundation for similar test projects in Hong Kong, Bhutan, Palau, and Montenegro.

Ripple is still growing, even though the company is still being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which started in 2020.

The SEC says that Ripple sold unregistered stocks worth $1.3 billion in the form of its XRP token. Ripple says that XRP is not a security and that the SEC has never told it so.

Cointelegraph just revealed that the company also says it spent $200 million to fight the lawsuit. Even though no one knows for sure when the trial will end, many people think that the release of the so-called “Hinman documents” could affect the rest of the legal proceedings.

The Hinman documents talk about internal SEC communications about a speech that William Hinman, who used to run the SEC’s corporate finance section, gave in 2018. During his speech, Hinman said that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether might start out as stocks but could become commodities once they are decentralized enough.

Back then, according to internal SEC notes, the commission was worried Hinman’s remarks might make it “difficult for the agency to take a different position on Ether in the future.”

Although Himan’s statement was delivered prior to the SEC’s lawsuit against Ripple and didn’t specifically mention XRP, analysts contend that it nonetheless demonstrates that even the SEC recognized there was uncertainty over the agency’s handling of cryptocurrencies.