According to an Aug. 24 report from the Bank for International Settlements, “there is growing discussion of a new payment technology: central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).”
China’s Commerce Ministry said on Aug. 14 that it is expanding its central bank digital currency experiment to the capital and some of the country’s wealthiest regions, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The next steps in the country’s digital currency/electronic payment, or DC/EP, project—which it has been hammering away at for five years—are to “follow the principles of stability, security and control” and to “select pilot verification areas, scenarios and service scopes,” said Mu Changchun, the head of the PBOC’s digital currency research institute.
China has spent five years preparing to launch the digital yuan, which might happen in a matter of months. But bankers and financial industry professionals surveyed at an industry conference in October still believe the United States will be the first to create a global digital currency.
