The United States and Australia have both announced new updates on their efforts towards assessing the feasibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). While the United States says it is planning to establish a new Treasury Department-led working group to deliberate on the possible launch of a digital dollar, the Reserve Bank of Australia on Thursday unveiled 14 firms who proposed various CBDC uses cases to be tested in its limited-scale CBDC pilot that “will take place over the coming months.”
Nellie Liang, the US Department of
Treasury Undersecretary for Domestic Finance announced the planned launch of
the new senior-level working group on Wednesday, noting that the group will
comprise top executives from the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve, the
National Security Council and other government agencies. Group members will
meet often ‘in coming months’ to trash out the benefits of a CBDC to the US economy, she noted.
In addition, the group will discuss how a
digital dollar can help the United States to maintain its position as a leader
in global finance, preserve its national security and ensure privacy while
stopping the illicit flow. However, Liang emphasized that the Treasury and the
Federal Reserve have not yet decided on the importance of a digital dollar.
The planned launch of the working group
comes almost a year after President Joe Biden signed an executive order that
mandates a number of federal agencies to study the risks and benefits of cryptocurrencies and the possibility of a digital order.
In August last year, the Reserve Bank of
Australia entered a partnership with the
Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), a $180 million research
programme funded by financial industry participants and other stakeholders, to
explore use cases for CBDC. The government later invited interested industry
participants to propose CBDC use cases for
the project.
Following a submission from industry participants, the central bank on Thursday disclosed that it has selected 14 use cases to be
included in the project. These include the usage of CBDC for offline payments,
nature-based asset trading, corporate bond and tokenized foreign exchange
settlement
