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Op-ed by Mr Agustín Carstens, General Manager of the BIS, and H.M. Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, published by Project Syndicate, 18 April 2022.

Less than two weeks after the consultation process’ start, the prevalent mood in the comments section appears quite negative.

Ripple rejoices, the SEC gets challenged to a narrative battle and Brazil moves ahead with crypto legislation.

Paolo Ardoino, chief technology officer, of Tether and Bitfinex, explains why USDT will retain its dominance in an increasingly competitive stablecoin market.

From fiat banknotes to fractional reserve banking, the notion of what constitutes money in the U.S. has changed over time. But is the time right for e-cash?

The Bank of Japan’s executive director announced that the eagerly-awaited digital yen won’t be used to attain negative interest rates.

Papers in this volume were prepared for a meeting of emerging market Deputy Governors organised by the Bank for International Settlements on 9–10 February 2022.

Russia should deploy cryptocurrencies and CBDCs for settlement and payments with Africa, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry believes.

Japanese people will ultimately decide whether they want a digital currency, executive director says

The prototype aims to examine the ability of US clearing and settlement infrastructure to support the US central bank digital currency using a DLT platform.

The sovereign national digital currency will be based on the national fiat and would have a fixed supply quite similar to Bitcoin.

Central banks are considering how retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) may help support financial inclusion. While they are not a magic bullet, central banks see CBDC as a further tool to promote financial inclusion if this goal features prominently in the design from the get-go. In particular, central banks are considering design options around promoting innovation in the two-tiered financial system (eg allowing for novel non-bank payment service providers), offering a robust and low-cost public sector technological basis (with novel interfaces and offline payments), facilitating enrolment and education (via simplified due diligence and electronic know your customer) and fostering interoperability (both domestically and across borders). Together, these features can address a range of existing barriers to financial inclusion.

The researchers from BIS and the World Bank identify common factors across nine central banks that face a variety of different challenges.

Privacy, security, and offline access present difficult problems

The South African Reserve Bank stated further work would be undertaken to study the findings from the project and used to inform policy and regulatory responses to DLT and CBDCs.