New money, old money

David Rule and Iain de Weymarn

Technologies such as distributed ledgers create the possibility of new forms of digital money, whether privately-issued ‘stable coins’, tokenised commercial bank deposits, or central bank digital currencies. Authorities are considering a world where digital money circulates alongside existing forms of money. In the past, the nature of money has often changed. Prior to the late-seventeenth century, English money comprised predominantly silver coin and in the subsequent two centuries mainly gold coin, before evolving to include paper banknotes and bank accounts linked to card, internet and app-based payment systems. But what can a previous period when money changed – 1695–97, when paper money first began to circulate alongside coin – tell us about the possible transition to digital money?

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Beyond blockchain: what are the technology requirements for a Central Bank Digital Currency?

Simon Scorer

What type of technology would you use if you wanted to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC) i.e. a national currency denominated, electronic, liability of the central bank? It is often assumed that blockchain, or distributed ledger technology (DLT), would be required; but although this could have some benefits (as well as challenges), it may not be necessary. It could be sensible to approach this issue the same way you would any IT systems development problem – starting with an analysis of requirements, before thinking about the solution that best meets these.

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Central Bank Digital Currency: DLT, or not DLT? That is the question

Simon Scorer

The topics of central bank digital currency (CBDC) and distributed ledger technology (DLT) are often implicitly linked. The genesis of recent interest in CBDC was the emergence of private digital currencies, like Bitcoin, which often leads to certain assumptions about the way a CBDC might be implemented – i.e. that it would also need to use a form of blockchain or DLT. But would a CBDC really need to use DLT? In this post I explain that it may not be necessary to use DLT for a CBDC, but I also consider some of the reasons why it could still be desirable.

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