On January 18, the Digital Dollar Project (DDP) announced the release of an updated edition of their white paper titled “Exploring a U.S. CBDC.” Despite the fact that its primary focus is still on the United States, the project broadened the study in order to investigate digital currency experiments being undertaken by central banks in other countries.
In the initial edition of the document, which was released in May 2020, the DDP presented its “champion model,” which consisted of an intermediated wholesale and retail CBDC. Since then, the number of CBDC initiatives carried out throughout the world has expanded from 35 to 114. The most recent version of the DDP paper kept the fundamental principles of the champion, such as those pertaining to privacy and monetary policy, and also highlighted the technical developments that have taken place in recent years.
The authors’ concerns that the United States is slipping behind in CBDC research and leadership were the primary focus of the report’s new proposals, which were mostly centered on those warnings. Regardless of the ultimate choice made by the United States on the introduction of a dollar CBDC, the authors wrote:
“It [is] imperative that the United States government consider ways to maintain the use of the dollar in digital global payment systems and develop a strategy related to the use of alternative payment systems.” “It [is] imperative that the United States government consider ways to maintain the use of the dollar in digital global payment systems.”
Christopher Giancarlo, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, founded the DDP in the year 2020 with the intention of advancing a CBDC in the United States. Accenture, a corporation that specializes in information technology, has collaborated with the organization to carry out a number of test initiatives. In the year 2022, they launched a technological sandbox in collaboration with Ripple, Emtech, and three other firms.
In a report that was published in January 2022, the Federal Reserve declared that it “would only pursue a CBDC in the setting of substantial public and cross-governmental support.” The research of a CBDC for the United States has continued, most notably in Project Hamilton, which has published two reports and has just just declared its purpose to be finished.
There has been no indication from the government to the Federal Reserve that it is appropriate to proceed with the launch of a USD CBDC.
