2021-2: "How to issue a Central Bank Digital Currency" published
We are happy to announce the publication of our paper on "How to Issue a Central Bank Digital Currency" by the Swiss National Bank.
With the emergence of Bitcoin and recently proposed stablecoins from BigTechs, such as Diem (formerly Libra), central banks face a choice of either leaving the field to private actors or offering their own digital alternative to physical cash. We do not address whether a central bank should issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Instead, we demonstrate how a central bank could do so, if desired or needed. We propose a token-based system without distributed ledger technology and show how earlier-deployed, software-only electronic cash can be improved upon to preserve transaction privacy, meet regulatory requirements in a compelling way, and offer a level of quantum-resistant protection against systemic privacy risk. Neither monetary policy nor financial stability would be materially affected because our CBDC would replicate physical cash rather than bank deposits.