To see the most up to date version of this tabulation, please go to: https://kiffmeister.com/jurisdictions-where-wholesale-cbdc-is-being-explored/
John Kiff Normal John Kiff 2 27 2022-03-08T14:55:00Z 2022-03-08T14:55:00Z 1 1110 6330 52 14 7426 16.00 Clean Clean false false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:””; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:8.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:107%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:”Calibri”,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableGrid {mso-style-name:”Table Grid”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-priority:39; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt:solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-border-insideh:.5pt solid windowtext; mso-border-insidev:.5pt solid windowtext; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”,serif; mso-fareast-font-family:”Times New Roman”;}According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) central bank digital currency (CBDC) is a digital payment instrument, denominated in the jurisdiction’s unit of account, that is a direct liability of the jurisdiction’s monetary authority. If it’s a broadly available general purpose payment instrument, we call it “retail” CBDC and “wholesale” CBDC usage is restricted, typically to financial institutions.
Note that I never mentioned the technology platform – whether it runs on a centralized or distributed ledger, or whether there is even a ledger at all (i.e., “token” based). And that’s because discussions around retail CBDC are generally agnostic about the platform type. However, it’s my sense that that is not the case for wholesale CBDC.
And that may be because wholesale CBDC is not really anything new. For example, a 2018 IMF staff discussion note characterized central bank reserves as a “wholesale form of CBDC used exclusively for interbank payments” which has been around for ages. And in 2020, ECB legal staff noted that “the issuance by central banks of digital liabilities and the corresponding holding, by third parties, of intangible money claims against the balance sheet of the digital liability-issuing central bank would not represent a genuine novelty.”
And a 2020 paper that surveyed wCBDC research found that “the overarching motivation for CBDC research by central banks is to assess the impact of distributed ledger technology (DLT) on financial market infrastructures (FMIs). Which all implies to me that when people say “wholesale CBDC” they really mean to say is DLT- based wholesale CBDC. This may be a trivial discussion but when we say “retail CBDC” we encompass all platforms and as everyone knows I’m a stickler on definitions!
I’ve tabulated below the experiments that have popped up in my Daily Digest. I’ve categorized them according to use cases (domestic payments, cross-border payments, and securities settlement). Two projects are cross-throughed (Project Stella and Project Nexus) because I’m not certain that there is actually a wholesale CBDC component. Anyone who can throw light on those two projects, or think I’ve missed any, please let me know in the comments!
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Domestic Payments System Focused Wholesale CBDC Experiments |
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Central Bank |
Project |
Platform/Vendor Partner(s) |
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Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) |
Ethereum |
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Bank of Canada |
Ethereum |
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R3 Corda |
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Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) |
R3 Corda |
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Hyperledger Fabric & Quorum |
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South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB) |
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Bank of Thailand (BOT) |
R3 Corda |
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R3 Corda |
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Cross-Border Payments Focused Wholesale CBDC Experiments |
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Central Bank |
Project |
Platform/Vendor Partner(s) |
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Bank of Canada & Monetary Authority of Singapore |
R3 Corda & Quorum |
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Banque de France (BdF) |
Multiple Platforms |
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Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) & Bank of Thailand (BOT) |
R3 Corda |
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Consensys |
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Saudi Arabian Monetary Authority (SAMA) and the CBUAE |
Hyperledger Fabric |
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Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH) and: |
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Swiss National Bank and Banque de France |
R3 Corda |
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RBA, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), MAS, and SARB |
R3 Corda and Quorum |
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HKMA, BOT; the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), and CBUAE |
ConsenSys |
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Securities Settlement System Focused Wholesale CBDC Experiments |
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Central Bank |
Project |
Platform/Vendor Partner(s) |
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Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) |
Ethereum |
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Bank of Canada |
R3 Corda |
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Banque de France (BdF) |
Securities settlement |
Multiple platforms |
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South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB) |
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Bank of Thailand (BOT) |
R3 Corda |
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Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH) and: |
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Swiss National Bank (SNB) |
R3 Corda |
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SNB and BdF |
R3 Corda |
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