Germany’s community bank group has argued that a Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) should only be brought into circulation by commercial banks who should be ‘appropriately compensated’ for it. It wants to see limits on the amount that may be stored by retail customers and an outright ban on businesses using it as a store of value to counter the risks of bank disintermediation.

The cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase has published a series of tweets giving its perspective on stablecoins, providing a good summary and insight about them.

The 2023 World Banknote Summit (WBS) took place in Antwerp and was structured around three key areas – the performance of cash in a crisis, the sustainability of cash and the future outlook of cash. While there was a slight European bias, the topics, lessons and discussions had a global relevance.

In a recent speech to the European Union Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, Fabio Panetta, European Central Bank board member, said the ECB is looking at a new digital euro app with a basic payment function and creating a standardised way of connecting end users to intermediaries.

SICPA has entered into a strategic partnership with the INX Digital Company with the aim of helping governments develop innovative and sovereign Central Bank Digital Currency ecosystems.

An important CBDC topic is its impact on a central bank’s ability to implement monetary policy. A technical paper by the BIS examines the possible impact of paying interest on CBDCs, or enabling CBDCs to compete with other payment methods in terms of convenience.

Until now the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has concentrated on wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (wCBDC), which are used with financial institutions.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Financial Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) have issued a white paper on CBDCs.

The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub have been working on Project Aurum.

The Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) conference took place at the very end of August in Frankfurt, the first CBDC conference in person, reflecting just how new CBDCs are.