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For crypto money, getting it right trumps speed: BIS
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) expects more countries to tap into central bank digital currency (CBDC) development.
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A visual representation of the digital cryptocurrency bitcoin at the Bitcoin Change shop in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv on Feb. 6, 2018. (AFP/Jack Guez )
T
he Bank for International Settlements (BIS) expects more and more central banks to begin studying and developing digital currencies in the coming years but warns that authorities must ensure resilience and inclusion.
As of January, 68 central banks have publicly announced that they were working on their own central bank digital currency (CBDC), and 28 others have already launched pilot project, BIS data shows.
Meanwhile, the central banks of Nigeria and the Bahamas, as well as the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank, have issued digital currencies.
Agustín Carstens, the general manager of the BIS, said central banks had to make sure that their digital currency systems could handle millions of transactions per minute so as not go down and thereby keep consumers from using their money.
Central banks also need to ensure that all parts of the country had access to the digital currency, which posed a challenge particularly for countries of huge territory, like Indonesia, Carstens said, adding that a CBDC could help to improve financial inclusion.
“Hopefully, in the next few years, we will see different examples of countries jumping into CBDC more decisively,” Carstens told The Jakarta Post in a video interview on Feb. 8.
“I would say that there is a huge amount of resources [and] intelligence being invested into CBDC. But, again, this is a matter of getting it right rather than getting it fast,” said Carstens, who served as the governor of the Bank of Mexico between 2010 and 2017.
