CBDC activity heats up, but few projects move beyond pilot stage
Government-issued electronic currency seems to be an idea whose time has come.
“More than half of the world’s central banks are now developing digital currencies or running concrete experiments on them,” reported the Bank for International Settlements, or BIS, in early May — something that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
The BIS also found that nine out of ten central banks were exploring central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, in some form or other, according to its survey of 81 central banks conducted last autumn but just published.
Many were taken aback by the progress. “It is truly remarkable that some 90% of central banks are doing work on CBDCs,” Ross Buckley, KPMG-KWM professor of disruptive innovation at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, told Cointelegraph. “The year-on-year growth in this field is extraordinary.”
“What I found most surprising was the speed at which advanced economies were moving toward retail CBDCs,” Franklin Noll, president at Noll Historical Consulting, LLC, told Cointelegraph. “As recently as the middle of last year, central banks in advanced economies were taking a rather relaxed view of CBDCs, not seeing them as particularly necessary or worthy of much attention.”
Momentum accelerated last year, the report observed. After the Bahamas launched the world’s first live retail CBDC — the Sand Dollar — in 2020, Nigeria followed in 2021 with its own electronic money, the eNaira. Meanwhile, the Eastern Caribbean and China released pilot versions of their digital currencies, DCash and e-CNY, respectively. “And there is likely more to come: a record share of central banks in the survey — 90% — is engaged in some form of CBDC work,” said the BIS.
Implementing a successful
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