The Bank of England (BoE) has announced that it will collaborate with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on a year-long research project focused on development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
In a collaboration that was agreed in February, the UK central bank indicates that it will be working with MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative group to analyse potential opportunities, challenges, risks and trade offs involved in designing a CBDC system.
This initiative will be part of the BoE’s wider ‘research and exploration’ programme into CBDC development that was announced in November.
This will include a consultation running during 2022 that will frame the BoE’s and HM Treasury’s assessment of the case for a UK CBDC and will evaluate the primary issues at hand — specifically high-level design features, potential benefits and implications for users and businesses, and indication for further work.
The BoE and HMT emphasise that no decision has yet been made on whether to introduce a CBDC for the UK. These two entities created a joint CBDC Taskforce in April 2021 to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of the case for introducing a UK CBDC.
