Why Central Banks Want to Launch Digital Currencies

In 1694 the Bank of England became the first public bank to regularly issue banknotes as an alternative to coins, as a means of payment. Three centuries later, it’s primarily tasked with maintaining price stability, much like any other central bank across the world. But these cautious institutions are now buzzing with talk of a revolutionary concept, a form of money you cannot see: central bank digital currencies. When you ask central banks around the world whether they are exploring CBDC, one year ago the answer was 80% of them were exploring, and now it's nearly 90%.

Last year, 40% were experimenting and now it's 60%. The vast majority of central banks are exploring CBDC. The idea of digital money is not new. Many of us use debit and credit cards or payments apps for transactions, but what would make a central bank digital currency different? One of the big financial developments over the last few years has been the rise in popularity of cryptocurrencies, with one in particular, bitcoin, standing out.

Following Tesla’s announcement that it bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoin in February 2021, the volatile cryptocurrency’s price surged to new highs, giving it a theoretical market capitalization that is even larger than the world's two largest payments processing companies: Visa and MasterCard. Unlike traditional money, cryptocurrencies are not issued by a central bank, but rather via a decentralized network of computers, typically using blockchain technology.

Even Facebook is trying to get in on the act with the 2019 announcement that it would develop its own digital currency, known at the time as Libra and now rebadged as Diem. And so, at that point central bankers started to realize they were really under some threat. And the question became, if we can't beat them, do we join them? Investors in bitcoin believe that because there is a theoretical cap on the number of bitcoins that can ever be mined, the cryptocurrency will become increasingly valuable at a time when central banks have been printing more money than ever before to arrest the economic fallout from the pandemic.  

That's why people sometimes call bitcoin ‘digital gold’. Many central banks are worried that the widespread adoption of these independent cryptocurrencies could weaken their control over the financial system. This could cause financial instability, especially because cryptocurrencies do not have the legal or the regulatory safeguards that central bank money does. So why not issue a digital currency of their own? Currently, regular bank deposits, cash and cryptocurrencies issued by the private sector, such as Diem and Bitcoin, all have a few features that make them useful, but the hope is that publicly available CBDCs would have all these desirable characteristics.

Unlike your savings in a commercial bank, which rely on the bank’s promise to fulfill, CBDCs are recognized by law and backed by the power of the central bank, which cannot go bankrupt. For example, if a commercial bank collapses, part of your savings could potentially be wiped out. But this wouldn’t be the case for CBDCs, which could be as trusted as cash, as convenient as a payment app, yet also benefit from the same blockchain technology which underpins cryptocurrencies. And just like cash, CBDCs could be distributed through commercial banks, avoiding too much disruption to the financial system or the central bank having to deal directly with many millions of citizens and businesses.

Think of bank notes, which are the closest equivalent to central bank digital currencies that we have today. Except that they are on paper, of course. This is money that is issued by the central bank and used daily in retail payments. The central bank sells bank notes to the commercial banks, and then the commercial banks distribute bank notes through ATMs to their clients. This means that everyone could have access to this digital currency, which could bring a lot of benefits.

 It could make payments faster, allowing for immediate settlements and no processing delays. And it could also make payments cheaper. In the U.S., the aggregate cost of making retail payments ranges from 0.5% to 0.9% of GDP. Digital currencies would reduce those costs. It also means that more people could have access to electronic payments. Currently, over 1.5 billion adults across the globe don’t have access to the financial system and even in an advanced economy such as the U.S., more than 6% of Americans don't have a bank account. Issuing digital currencies could also make it easier for governments to deliver stimulus checks, or even go one step further and make targeted payments to those deemed most in need.

So how soon could central bank digital currencies become a reality? China is the major economy which is most advanced in its CBDC development. The People’s Bank of China has been running tests of its digital currency since April 2020 with the help of four banks in the country. Tens of thousands of consumers have already been involved with the pilot, spending two billion yuan in over four million transactions.

For China, it could also be a means of re-asserting control over a financial system challenged by the rapid growth of fintech companies Ant Pay and WeChat, these are the dominant payment technologies in China, and they are in the hands of Alibaba and Tencent, and if Beijing can wrest that back then I think they will. And the way that it’s set up, the e-yuan, is that it will still be effectively very integrated with the commercial banks but it is effectively a direct challenge to the payment technologies, they are trying to ultimately displace them. The e-yuan's going to have its own digital wallet at the commercial bank and over time people will probably just find it more convenient to use that, and thereby displacing Ant Pay, for example.

There may also be a geopolitical consideration for China, providing a mechanism to shift away from using the U.S. dollar. There is no doubt that Beijing views the U.S. dollar as a strategic advantage the U.S. has. The problem is that most of the trade, the real-world trade, is denominated and invoiced in U.S. dollars, right, and China sees this and it's hard for them to sort of push renminbi into the global financial system, the global trading system, but they’re trying. But if they had a digital currency that would be potentially a really fascinating angle.

So, you can see, if it has got a technological advantage, that perhaps this is a way for people to think about the renminbi in a different way and perhaps, you know, ultimately start to chip away at hegemonic status of the dollar. But it's not just China. The European Central Bank has plans for a digital euro, although it may be a few years before it is available.

We are going to have to address all the issues of anti-money laundering, financing of terrorism, privacy of users and all their information, the appropriate technology that will carry that digital currency, and this is, you know, a project that could probably take us, two, three, four years before it is launched. This has got people wondering whether issuing a central bank digital currency could interfere with the effectiveness of monetary policy. Central banks have addressed CBDCs so far, really as part of a payment’s discussion.

That’s a discussion for monetary policy committees, for the ECB governing council, whether they want to use CBDC or not, but it’s too early to have that discussion. But theoretically if the central bank wanted, they could also pass on negative rates to the holders of central bank digital currencies? Think of CBDC as being the future of bank notes, bank notes do not bear interest. And so, if you follow that line of reasoning then CBDC should not bear interest. And if you want CBDC to bear interest then you're creating something different.

A lot depends on how much people would use CBDCs, and no central bank wants them to completely replace traditional cash, but rather to compliment it. One risk associated with CBDCs is that in an extreme situation, such as after a financial crash, you could see people withdrawing their deposits from commercial banks and opting to store their money in digital currencies backed by the central bank. Trouble would be if CBDC would replace bank deposits in a large amount because then what happens is that savers could shift their savings from bank account to CBDC. Then banks could have a problem for funding. This might have an effect on the financing of whole economy.

People can shift saving from bank account to CBDC just with a click. This would be very dangerous obviously. As we move towards a more cashless society, will central bank digital currencies ever become as trusted and as convenient as bank notes? Quite possibly, though it may take months, maybe even years. The trust in private money is built on the trust in the currency and the fact that behind that there is a central bank which has tools to keep the value of the currency. We have to buy this trust and that's why we need to stay in the economy and the way to stay in the economy is to make sure people