The number of central banks intent on debuting CBDCs in the immediate term has doubled since last year, despite the calamity that has since ensued in the crypto market.
“If widely used for payments, cryptoassets including stablecoins may constitute a threat to financial stability,” read a new survey from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). “To strengthen and coordinate regulatory approaches to contain their risks to the financial system, the CPMI, IOSCO, FSB and BCBS published updated or new guidance and standards for stablecoins or crypto activities and markets more broadly.”
Almost a quarter of all central banks globally are currently piloting a retail CBDC, with over two dozen such state-backed digital currencies set to roll out by 2030, the BIS has found.
CBDCs, or central bank digital currencies, are digital forms of a nation’s or international economic zone’s currency, issued by that entity’s central bank. Most analogous to stablecoins—cryptocurrencies that peg their value to fiat currency—CBDCs have already been issued by Nigeria, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the Eastern Caribbean.
Those entities are soon to be joined by numerous others, according to Monday’s survey. By the end of the decade, 15 consumer-facing retail CBDCs, and nine wholesale CBDCs (designed to facilitate transactions between financial institutions) are expected to launch across the world, both in emerging and established economies.
60% of central banks surveyed said that the emergence and proliferation of stablecoins and other cryptoassets have accelerated their work on CBDCs, according to the report.
That does not mean, however, that the calamitous crypto news cycle of the last year has convinced all central banks of the necessity of a state-backed digital currency.
While 93% of all central banks are investigating CBDCs in some capacity, a growing number of those banks have also indicated with greater certainty that they do not intend to issue a digital currency any time soon.
“A clear divergence has emerged: compared to last year, some central banks have become more likely to issue a CBDC within the next three years, while others indicated to be less likely to do so,” the report reads.
One country that appears yet to have made up its mind is the United States.
Last month, a U.S. Treasury official revealed that the department “has not yet determined whether it will pursue a CBDC.”
In May the state of Florida banned CBDCs, deriding the innovation as “Big Brother’s digital dollar.”