Belgium’s Digitalization Minister Mathieu Michel — brother of European Council chief Charles — now wants to reinvent it as a metaverse project.
A faddy EU fintech project that clocked up €60 million in development costs with almost nothing to show for it has been thrown a lifeline by the brother of Belgian EU Council chief Charles Michel.
Known as the European Blockchain Services Infrastructure Consortium (EBSI), the project — originally backed by the European Commission, 27 member governments, dozens of lobbyists and hundreds of EU officials — had hoped to use highly hyped blockchain technology to spruce up the bloc’s digital infrastructure.
But waning enthusiasm for blockchain initiatives linked to the technology’s repeated failure to deliver on industry expectations had seen the project relegated to Brussels’ backwaters.