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BIS Working Papers No 880 Rise of the central bank digital currencies: drivers, approaches and technologies by Raphael Auer, Giulio Cornelli and Jon Frost Monetary and Economic Department August 2020 JEL classification: E58, G21. Keywords: central bank digital currency, CBDC, central banking, digital currency, digital money, distributed ledger technology, blockchain.BIS Working Papers are written by members of the Monetary and Economic Department of the Bank for International Settlements, and from time to time by other economists, and are published by the Bank. The papers are on subjects of topical interest and are technical in character. The views expressed in them are those of their authors and not necessarily the views of the BIS. This publication is available on the BIS website (bis). Bank for International Settlements 2020. All rights reserved. Brief excerpts may be reproduced or translated provided the source is stated. ISSN 1020-0959 (print) ISSN 1682-7678 (online)Rise of the CBDCs: drivers, approaches and technologies 1 Rise of the central bank digital currencies: drivers, approaches and technologies Raphael Auer, Giulio Cornelli and Jon Frost Abstract Central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) are receiving more attention than ever before. Yet the motivations for issuance vary across countries, as do the policy approaches and technical designs. We investigate the economic and institutional drivers of CBDC development and take stock of design efforts. We set out a comprehensive database of technical approaches and policy stances on issuance, relying on central bank speeches and technical reports. Most projects are found in digitised economies with a high capacity for innovation. Work on retail CBDCs is more advanced where the informal economy is larger. We next take stock of the technical design options. More and more central banks are considering retail CBDC architectures in which the CBDC is a direct cash-like claim on the central bank, but where the private sector handles all customer-facing activity. We conclude with an in-depth description of three distinct CBDC approaches by the central banks of China, Sweden and Canada. Keywords: central bank digital currency, CBDC, central banking, digital currency, digital money, distributed ledger technology, blockchain. JEL classifications: E58, G21. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Bank for International Settlements. For comments and input, we thank David Archer, Douglas Arner, Codruta Boar, Harro Boven, Haiwei Cao, Stijn Claessens, Carl-Andreas Claussen, Sebastian Doerr, Umar Faruqui, Leonardo Gambacorta, Philippe Haene, Henry Holden, Martin Hood, Linda Jeng, Taejin Park, Mateo Piccolo, Martin Summer, Tara Rice, Amber Wadsworth, Peter Wierts, Hye-Rim Yoo, Nouran Youssef, Dirk Zetzsche and participants at a BIS research meeting, an Arab Monetary Fund Fintech Working Group meeting and a meeting of the OECD Experts Group on Finance and Digitalisation. We thank Mu Changchun, Lyu Yuan, Scott Hendry, Francisco Rivadeneyra, Dinesh Shah, Gabriela Guibourg, Martin Johansson, Hanna Armelius and Stig Johansson for conversations regarding the CBDC approaches of the Peoples Bank of China, Bank of Canada and Sveriges Riksbank. Bank for International Settlements (BIS), Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF).Rise of the CBDCs: drivers, approaches and technologies 2 Contents 1. Introduction . 3 2. Taking stock of CBDC research and development efforts. 5 3. The cross-country drivers of CBDC development . 9 A novel CBDC database . 10 Examining the cross-country drivers of CBDC projects . 11 4. Policy approaches and technical design . 16 A stocktaking framework: the CBDC Pyramid . 17 The drivers of technological designs . 19 5. Approaches for CBDC design: three examples . 21 PBC: the DC/EP project (pilot stage) . 22 Riksbank: the e-krona project . 24 Bank of Canada: CBDC as a contingency plan . 26 6. Conclusion . 28 References . 30 Annex A: data collection for CBDC indicators . 37 Annex B: overview of CBDC projects . 39Rise of the CBDCs: drivers, approaches and technologies 3 1. Introduction Over the centuries, wave after wave of new payment technologies has emerged to meet societal demands. Coins, banknotes, cheques and credit cards were each innovations in their own day (Giannini (2011). Today, there is growing discussion of a new payment technology: central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). As a digital liability of the central bank, wholesale CBDCs could become a new instrument for settlement between financial institutions, while retail (or general purpose) CBDCs would be a central bank liability accessible to all. 1 Although the concept of a CBDC was proposed decades ago (ie Tobin (1987), attitudes about whether central banks should issue them have changed noticeably over the past year. Initially, central banks focused on systemic implications that warranted caution (Barontini and Holden (2019). But over time, the need to respond to the declining use of cash in some countries came to the fore, and a number of central banks have warmed to the idea of issuing a CBDC. 2 A tipping point was the announcement of Facebooks Libra and the ensuing public sector response. As of late 2019, central banks representing a fifth of the worlds population reported that they were likely to issue CBDCs very soon (Boar et al (2020). Similarly, the share of central banks (by number) that are likely to issue a retail CBDC over the medium term (in one to six years) doubled in 2019, to 20%. Meanwhile, a full 80% of surveyed central banks are engaging in research, experimentation or development of CBDCs. 3 During the Covid-19 pandemic, social distancing measures, public concerns that cash may transmit the Covid-19 virus and new government-to-person payment schemes have further sped up the shift toward digital payments, and may give a further impetus to CBDC (see Auer et al (2020b). As a result, CBDCs have seized global attention and feature broadly in central bank communications and public search interest (Graph 1). Still, no major jurisdiction has decided to issue a retail CBDC, and many open questions remain. In the growing literature on CBDCs, discussions centre on several fundamental aspects. One is how central banks should create money and whether CBDCs are desirable in that context (Keister and Sanches (2019), Jackson and Pennacchi (2019), Kim and Kang (2019), Armelius et al (2020a). Another area is the systemic implications of CBDCs and how to cope with them (Brunnermeier and Niepelt (2019), Fernndez-Villaverde et al (2020), Kwon et al (2020), Carletti et al (2020). There is also work on policy design frameworks (Davoodalhosseini and Rivadeneyra (2020), Agur et al (2019), Allen et al (2020), their implications for cross-country payments (Milkau (2019), implications for the international role of currencies (Ferrari et al (2020) and legal aspects of their issuance (Hess (2020), Duque (2020), Nabilou (2020), Belke and Beretta (2019). 1 “General purpose” and “retail” are used interchangeably to refer to CBDCs that individuals and non- financial firms could access. For an overview and relevant definitions, see Bech and Garratt (2017) and CPMI and Markets Committee (2018). 2 Neither electronic money nor the discussion on the central banks role in providing it directly to the people is new (ie Tobin (1987). In the context of CBDCs, Broadbent (2016), Liikanen (2016), Mersch (2016), Wilkins (2016), Menon (2016), Skingsley (2016) and Nakaso (2016) were among high-level policymakers who argued early on that the idea should be taken seriously. 3 Also in the private sector, the potential design and implications thereof are garnering substantial attention. See PwC (2019) and World Economic Forum (2020).Rise of the CBDCs: drivers, approaches and technologies 4 CBDCs: the next hype or the future of payments? Graph 1 Timing of speeches and reports on CBDC 1 Google search interest over time 2 Number of speeches Search interest by year, index 1 12-month moving sum of the count of central bankers speeches resulting from a case-insensitive search for any of the following words/phrases: CBDC; central bank digital currency; digital currency and digital money. 2 12-week moving average of worldwide search interest. The data has been normalised to the 12-week moving average peak of each series. The search was run on search terms “Bitcoin” and “Facebook Libra” and topic “Central Bank Digital Currency”. Data accessed on 16 July 2020. Sources: Central bankers speeches; central banks websites; Google Trends; authors calculations. Finally, the technology of retail CBDCs and how they relate to private sector proposals is hotly contested (see Auer and Bhme (2020), Klein et al (2020), Clark and Mihailov (2019), Brunnermeier et al (2019) and Vives (2019). Much less contentious is the issuance of wholesale CBDCs (see Bech et al (2020) and Pfister (2020). Amidst intense discussion in the research and policy spheres (BIS (2020), and early development efforts, this study analyses the economic and institutional drivers of CBDC projects, thus shedding light on ultimate motivations. A next step is to understand the policy approaches and technical design of the various projects, and to look for commonalities and differences across countries. The questions this paper aims to answer are: what are the economic and institutional drivers for issuing CBDCs? How do central banks approach the issues? What are the technical solutions sought? To answer these questions, we first develop a novel CBDC project index based on central bank research and development (R BoT-HKMA (2020). 8 The first publicly announced work on retail CBDCs was conducted by the Swedish Riksbank (Sveriges Riksbank (2017). In Sweden, cash use has been declining in recent years, and the Riksbank has initiated a societal discussion on access to a central bank payments instrument for the general public. Over time, this “e-krona” project has been further developed. In February 2020, the Riksbank announced it would conduct a pilot project with Accenture aimed at developing a proposal for a technical solution for an e-krona (Sveriges Riksbank (2020); see Section 4). While announced somewhat later, perhaps the most advanced CBDC project at present is that of the Peoples Bank of China (PBC). Known as the Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DC/EP), this CBDC is now being piloted in four cities in China (see Section 4). DC/EP will be a cash-like liability of the PBC available to the general public and to foreign visitors of China through account-based interfaces. Meanwhile, the Bank of Canada has announced that is does not currently see a case for a retail CBDC, but that it is conducting work on retail CBDC as a contingency plan in case cash use suddenly declines or a private digital currency is widely adopted (see Section 4). The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) has launched a pilot called DXCD (ECCB (2019), and the Central Bank of the Bahamas has launched a pilot called the Sand Dollar (CBB (2019). Graph 2 gives a timeline of these and other projects. 4 There were a number of earlier speeches on private digital currencies. For instance, in December 2013, the Governor of the Central Bank of Mauritius discussed digital currencies in a speech on the development of the local financial sector (Bheeninck (2013). In 2015, the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India discussed private digital currencies in a speech (Gandhi (2015) 5 In addition, the Bank launched a formal research agenda on electronic money and payments in 2013. 6 The Bank of Canada, Bank of England and MAS subsequently worked in collaborative research with banks on challenges in cross-border payments and settlement and how various initiatives including wholesale CBDC could help. See Bank of Canada-MAS-Bank of England-HSBC (2018). 7 Project Stella is so named because the flags of both the European Union (EU) and Japan depict stars. The EU musters 12 stars. The Japanese flag depicts the sun the star in our solar system. 8 The project by the Bank of Thailand and the HKMA is titled Inthanon-LionRock, after the tallest mountain in Thailand (Doi Inthanon) and the iconic Lion Rock in Hong Kong. SAMA-UAECB Project “Aber” refers to an Arabic word for a cross-road or moving from one place to another.Rise of the CBDCs: drivers, approaches and technologies 7 CBDC projects have proliferated since 2016 Graph 2 Sources: Central bankers speeches; central banks websites. As of mid-July 2020, at least 36 central banks have published retail or wholesale CBDC work (Graph 3). At least three countries (Ecuador, Ukraine and Uruguay) have completed a retail CBDC pilot. Six retail CBDC pilots are ongoing: in the Bahamas, Cambodia (Bomakara (2019), China, the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union, CBDC projects status Graph 3 BS = The Bahamas; ECCB = Eastern Caribbean central bank; HK = Hong Kong SAR; SG = Singapore. The use of this map does not constitute, and should not be construed as constituting, an expression of a position by the BIS regarding the legal status of, or sovereignty of any territory or its authorities, to the delimitation of international frontiers and boundaries and/or to the name and designation of any territory, city or area. Source: central banks websites.Rise of the CBDCs: drivers, approaches and technologies 8 Speeches on CBDCs have turned more positive since late 2018 Number of speeches Graph 4 Search on keywords “CBDC”, “digital currency” and “digital money”. The classification is based on the authors judgment. The score takes a value of 1 if the speech stance was clearly negative or in case it was explicitly said that there was no specific plan at present to issue digital currencies. It takes a value of +1 if the speech stance was clearly positive or a project/pilot was launched or was in the pipeline. Other speeches (not displayed) have been classified as neutral. Sources: ; Central bankers speeches; central banks websites; authors calculations. Korea (Bank of Korea (2020) and Sweden). 9 Meanwhile, 18 central banks have published research on retail CBDCs (eg Harahap et al (2017), Burgos and Batavia (2018), Kiselev (2019) and Bank of Japan (2020), and another 13 have announced research or development work on a wholesale CBDC. In parallel, a growing number of central bank governors and board members have made public speeches about CBDCs. In 2017 and 2018, many of these had a negative or dismissive stance, particularly toward retail CBDCs. Since late 2018, the number of positive mentions of retail and wholesale CBDCs in speeches has risen, and in fact there have now been more speeches with a positive than a negative stance (Graph 4). The motivations for such work differ across jurisdictions. Based on a survey of central banks in the BIS Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) in late 2019, Boar et al (2020) show that in advanced
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