DFC

The IMF published a blog that provides a summary of African central bank digital currency (CBDC) activity based on CBDCTracker.org data. It points to the need for governments to improve access to digital infrastructure such as a phone or internet connectivity, and the importance of offline access, for a retail CBDC to be effective, particularly if financial inclusion is a primary motivator. It also underscores the need for central banks to develop the expertise and technical capacity to manage data privacy and financial integrity risks, including strengthening national identification systems so know-your-customer requirements are more easily enforced. There is also a risk that users pull too much money out of banks to purchase CBDCs, affecting banks’ ability to lend.

Danmarks Nationalbank published a paper that summarizes the central bank's thoughts on digital currency, including retail central bank digital currency (CBDC). At present, and with the associated costs and possible risks, the paper concludes that it is not clear how retail CBDCs will create significant added value relative to the existing solutions in Denmark. However, the central bank will continue to continuously assess the various reasons for issuing retail CBDC and their possible relevance in relation to the Danish financial system

Tether will be launching Tether tokens (“GBP₮”) pegged to British Pound Sterling in July. No further details were provided, such as how and where it will be backed. It will join four other fiat-currency pegged tokens Tether has in the market: the U.S. dollar-pegged USD₮, the Euro-pegged EUR₮, the offshore Chinese Yuan-pegged CNH₮, and MXN₮, the Mexican Peso-pegged stablecoin.

The Mojaloop Foundation launched its Mojaloop Central Bank Digital Currency Center of Excellence in Singapore to advance financial inclusion in emerging markets. Mojaloop is an open source payment platform based on the non-blockchain-based  Interledger Protocol.

The BIS Innovation Hub London Centre invites companies and organizations to submit expressions of interest to join the Project Rosalind to develop application programming interface (API) prototypes for distributing CBDCs. The group will be structured into two tiers – API users and technical advisors, with different roles and responsibilities for each. The project, run jointly with the Bank of England, aims to address some of the questions around developing a retail CBDC system, including: how to improve public-private sector collaboration? How to maximize interoperability, encourage competition and enable adoption? How might retail CBDC meet current and future consumer needs in a fast-changing payments landscape? The objective is to explore how this interface could best enable a central bank ledger to interact with private sector service providers to safely provision retail payments.

Bangladesh Bank will be conducting a central bank digital currency (CBDC) feasibility study, according to the country's Minister of Finance AHM Mustafa Kamal. The main motivation is to "facilitate currency in virtual transactions and to encourage startups and e-commerce businesses.

"Japanese blockchain firm Soramitsu has reportedly landed feasibility studies for central bank digital currency (CBDC) with both Vietnam and the Philippines. Soramitsu is establishing a considerable footprint in Southeast Asia following its successful implementation of Cambodia’s Bakong project in 2020. Last year it also started working with Laos’ central bank on a CBDC research project."

"Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) is preparing the concept of a digital manat [country’s national currency], an expert of the National Payment Systems Development Division of the Payment Systems and Settlements Department of CBA Rashad Gasimov said during еру Fintex Summit 2022 [Finance and Technologies Expo is being held in Azerbaijan’s Baku, on June 16-17], Trend reports."

The BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of Israel and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority will join forces to test the feasibility of a cyber secure two-tier retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) in which intermediaries are "exposure-less". Intermediaries in "Project Sela" will have technological access to the CBDC system, conduct the know your customer (KYC) processes, and provide consumer services, but are not financially exposed, at any point of the processes of obtaining, transferring, or redeeming CBDC. This architecture is assumed to have several benefits: less financial risk for customers, more liquidity, lower costs, increased competition, and wider access, plus  enhanced resilience to sophisticated cyber attacks.

Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) dollar-pegged stablecoin, is launching a EUR-backed stablecoin (EUROC) on June 30. EUROC will be 100% backed by euros held in euro-denominated banking accounts so that it’s always redeemable 1:1 for euros. Businesses will be able to mint EUROC straight from the source by depositing euros into their Circle Account using Silvergate’s Euro SEN network, after which it will be available to non-Circle Account users via digital asset exchanges and DeFi protocols. Additional deposit options are expected to be available later this year. EUROC will be issued as an ERC-20 token on the Ethereum blockchain, with support for additional blockchains expected later this year.

The Banco Central del Uruguay's Adolfo Sarmiento writes about seven lessons from the 2017-18 e-Peso CBDC pilot, highlighting that CBDC choices are based not only on technical considerations but also on money use culture. This implies a holistic assessment of the payment environment and a clear understanding of the cultural implications of a change that will be incremental but not reversible. This implies that research on CBDC must concern idiosyncratic aspects: economy organization, historical aspects, and even social implications of money.

The Atlantic Council published a report on cybersecurity issues related to central bank digital currency (CBDC). It analyzes the intertwined questions of policy, design, and security to focus policy makers on how to build secure CBDCs that protect users’ data and maintain financial stability. The analysis shows that privacy-preserving CBDC designs are not only possible, but also come with inherent security advantages, compared to current payment systems, that may reduce the risk of cyberattacks.

"Jürgen Schaaf stressed the importance of privacy (ranked first in the consultation on the digital euro by European citizens) and discussed different privacy options the ECB has analyzed. These options range from full anonymity to fully transparent payments to the central bank. It was argued that full anonymity will, as a preliminary view, not be a viable option as it conflicts with regulation around anti-money laundering. Nevertheless, and as stressed by some participants, since there is no CBDC regulation in place, an anonymous CBDC would not necessarily be against compliance. During the meeting, a survey about privacy was conducted amongst attendees and revealed that 50% of  participants were in favor of selective privacy, which means higher privacy for low-value transactions, an approach that has already been seen as technically feasible. 33% of the participants voted for anonymity, and 0% (!!) voted for payment transparency to an intermediary or fully transparent to the central bank. "

"Stablecoins, why do they exist? What purpose do they serve? Are they a necessary evil? How do they work? Let’s explore!"

"We estimate the effect of Bitcoin ownership on the level of cash holdings of Canadian consumers. Bitcoin ownership positively correlates with cash holdings even after accounting for selection into ownership via a control function approach. On average, Bitcoin owners hold 83 percent (in 2018) to 95 percent (in 2017) more cash than non-owners. Focusing on the quantiles of cash holdings, we find that Bitcoin ownership has a highly nonlinear effect. For example, the difference in cash holdings between Bitcoin owners and non-owners in 2017 varies from 63 percent at the 25th quantile of cash to 176 percent at the 95th quantile of cash. Our results provide some evidence to reject the hypothesis that new digital currencies or technologies, such as Bitcoin, will lead to a decline in cash holdings."

Tether pushed back on rumors that the commercial paper held as USDT stablecoin reserves is 85% comprised of paper backed by (mostly shaky) Chinese or Asian firms. As of the most recent attestation report commercial paper made up about 25% of USDT's backing, and Tether is gradually switching maturing paper into short-maturity U.S. Treasury securities. Also, Tether's Celsius position has been liquidated with no losses to Tether, and Tether has currently zero exposure to Celsius apart from a small investment made out of Tether equity in the company.

Banco Central do Brasil is reportedly pushing out its CBDC pilot work from end-2022 to 2023. This is due to a workers' strike at the central bank, which impacted the original schedule.

"Design flaws in the no-arbitrage mechanism contributed to the failure of the IRON stablecoin. That said, the design flaws we uncover in this paper are not easily fixed. For instance, using the spot price as opposed to the ten-minute weighted-average price of TITAN in the creation of IRON is susceptible to manipulation of the spot price. It remains to be seen whether future generations of algorithmic stablecoins can improve these issues. For now, our results serve as useful reminder that some stablecoins are not stable at all, particularly for the users of smaller accounts who bought into the falling knife when IRON was tumbling."

"We introduce a digital currency, either as a central bank digital currency (CBDC) or a financial crypto asset (stablecoin), in the network of financial accounts. Simulating a shift of deposits by both households and non-financial corporations from the banking sector to the digital currency, we model the different responses of the affected institutional sectors. We find that the introduction of a digital currency generates significant adjustments in the balance sheets of all sectors, may trigger large moves in securities prices and induces changes in the network structure. The economic impacts vary depending on the design of the digital innovation, the size of the deposit shift, the channels through which the balance sheet adjustments take place and the timing of the initiative."

The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) published a conference report based on an April 2022 workshop attended by Canadian and international experts (including yours truly). The discussion focused on the international backdrop and what can be learned from global leaders in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), to determine next steps for Canada and to assess the legal and regulatory changes required to support a Canadian CBDC.

"Built to enable an ideal banknote exchange for Central Bank Digital Currency, the IDEMIA secure offline CBDC wallet makes a highly secure digital cash experience truly available to everyone and at any time. This secure wallet allows a user to make consecutive digital offline payments with immediate settlement. The CBDC wallet user can initiate offline payments using any channel: contactless, email, QR Code, and the same terminals and standards currently used for card payments. The offline CBDC payments can be received by any device (secured or not), with or without an internet connection to the ledger."

"Central banks will struggle to rollout CBDCs that will be widely adopted. They may not provide consumers the same benefits as today’s services; privacy is unlikely to be a game-changer; and the private sector still offers scope for innovation. Without widespread adoption, a CBDC will be an expensive failure, and will do little to advance central banks’ goals. For the EU, regulation is a more sensible way to make European payments cheaper, and more diverse, competitive and innovative."

The Central Bank of Nigeria reportedly plans to introduce the unstructured supplementary service data (USSD) code to its eNaira central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform to ensure people without smartphones, but with basic featurephones and access to mobile data, could still transact on it.

MoneyGram launched its stablecoin-powered payment channel, giving users the ability to send USD Coin (USDC) payments worldwide that can be withdrawn as cash by recipients. The service is being rolled out across several key remittance markets, including Canada, the United States, Kenya and the Philippines. Global cash-out functionality will be available by the end of June. To encourage adoption, the USDC transfer service will carry zero fees for the first 12 months. The new transfer service was built on the Stellar (XLM) blockchain and allows Stellar wallet users to send USDC to recipients around the world.

"Small businesses have largely been ignored during the debate over digital currencies, even though they’re a hugely significant part of the U.S. economy and have much to gain from cheaper, more efficient payment systems. These businesses work with small margins, have less bargaining power than large companies, and suffer from cash flow problems as they wait to be paid for goods and services. Stablecoins and central bank digital currencies can help. These technologies can reduce payment processing costs, allowing small businesses to keep more of what they earn, and significantly accelerate how quickly they get paid. This could drastically improve small businesses’ liquidity and cash buffers, and help them survive negative economic shocks and thrive."

"If you were designing a CBDC you might want to create a cash-like experience for users. This is just one design decision, but it’s surprisingly tricky. There are two features in particular that define the user experience with cash: it’s anonymous and it’s authenticable. Creating a token that incorporates one of these features is straightforward. Creating a token with both features together, however, poses an interesting—though solvable—challenge for blockchains that use the UTXO model."

"Given the rapid pace of technological experimentation and development, and the multitude of variables at play, it can be challenging to assess the best technology choices for a new central bank digital currency (CBDC). This WEF white paper is intended to guide central banks and other decision-makers through major technology considerations for CBDC. It is divided into three parts: 1) discussion of CBDC technical design considerations given various policy goals, 2) an evaluation of the pros and cons, or trade-offs, of the use of distributed ledger technology in CBDC infrastructure, and 3) an overview of important cybersecurity risks and considerations for any CBDC."