Countries with most research into state-sponsored interbank cryptocurrency 2020

Published by Raynor de Best, Apr 19, 2021

Project Inthanon-Lionrock ranked as the world's most advanced Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) project for financial institutions in the world. CBDC are essentially cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH), but instead of being privately issues these are to be issued by central banks. As of 2021, no official CBDC existed yet as these are being tested by central banks all over the world - with the first one expected to arrive by late 2022. The numbers provided here, however, should not be confused with China's digital yuan or Sweden's e-krona: Those are examples of retail CBDC, aimed at replacing banknotes and physical coins for day-to-day consumer use. Canada's Project Jasper or South Africa's Khokha as found in this ranking are not retail but interbank CBDC: Central banks applying blockchain technology not for consumer use, but aimed towards an application in banking processes. This includes things like cross-border payments between banks or optimizing clearing and financial settlements.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) interbank or wholesale projects that are furthest in their development as of 2020, by country

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Source

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Sources

Release date

April 2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

December 2020

Special properties

The figures provided are meant to rank the development of CBDC worlwide, for more information see the "Details" tab. The source stat that it was rebased against an index of 100, and is dependent on the availability of data

Supplementary notes

The source states that the CBDC project status is the main variable for the index - tracking research, pilot and production as its three main stages of development. The more advanced a CBDC project is, the more point it receives. Additionally, the source allocated bonus points based on the duration of the project. Two other variables for the index value include the stance of the central bank based on published speeches, and a public interest proxy as measured in Google Trends or Baidu Index (for Mainland China).