The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and a group of central banks have published a paper detailing their “ongoing policy perspectives” on a retail central bank digital currency (rCBDC). The new publication is the fifth from the same authors.
The central banks of Canada, the European Union, Japan, Sweden, Switzerland, England and the United States teamed up with BIS to produce a short document in 2020 that established common principles and key features they found desirable in an rCBDC. That was followed a year later by three reports on more narrow questions an rCBDC would face.
Related: CBDCs on the horizon: The current state of CBDC initiatives around the world
The latest paper mainly continued the discussion of policy elements that were previously examined. The first is stakeholder engagement, which it concluded will depend on several mechanisms. Engagement with legislators will be essential since “outstanding legal issues related to CBDC will largely be a matter of national law.”
Seven central banks and the BIS take forward their work on retail central bank digital currencies. A new report summarises ideas and perspectives on policy options and practical implementation issues https://t.co/Qppbwn7OrS#CBDC pic.twitter.com/lDZMUlRhUZ
The paper identified seven such legal issues, starting with the question of whether an rCBDC would be the legal equivalent of cash or a new form of money. Privacy, a controversy in many current public debates about CBDCs, is also on the list.
Central banks are well equipped to issue CBDCs:
The involvement of the private sector in the creation of a CBDC ecosystem is a policy decision as well as a practical issue, the paper said. Furthermore, public acceptance will be decisive in the
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