According to the Atlantic Council’s Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker, 112 countries have a CBDC project at some stage of development. China’s CBDC project, the e-CNY, is arguably the most advanced among major economies and is due to officially start in 2023. The pilot project recorded 83 billion yuan (US$12 billion) worth of transactions in the first five months of 2022, up from 87.565 billion yuan in all of 2021. Nigeria and Jamaica have begun their own projects, while the Bahamas “Sand Dollar” project was the first CBDC to launch in 2020. The European Central Bank argues that central bank money is risk-free as it is guaranteed by the state and it aims to introduce a digital Euro across its 27 member states by mid-decade. The WEF cites the U.S. Federal Reserve saying a CBDC would be “the safest digital asset available to the general public, with no associated credit or liquidity risk.”Not everyone shares those views. While the language of CBDCs may mirror that of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, they depart fundamentally from each other in terms of decentralization and financial freedom, said Ben Caselin, head of research and strategy at Seychelles-headquartered crypto exchange AAX Ltd Inc.
Australia is among the latest countries to explore actual use cases for CBDCs. On Aug. 9 the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said it was partnering with government-backed Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) to explore the technology. While considerable research has gone into the technical aspects of CBDCs, less has been done to explore their economic benefits, the RBA said in a press release.“CBDC is no longer a question of technological feasibility,” said Andreas Furche, chief executive officer of the DFCRC, in the statement. &# Industry participants will be invited to develop their own use cases, from which the RBA will select to participate in the trial based on their potential. The project has the support of the Australian Treasury, which is running what it calls “token mapping” to assess each cryptocurrency by type, technology and use cases to better design regulations. The Treasury is expected to release an interim report on its findings in a few months.
Source: https://forkast.news/world-economic-forum-cbdc-australia-technology/