The Bank of England announced Friday that it had reached an agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab Digital Currency Initiative, or DCI, on a joint twelve-month research project on central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. The bank said in a statement that the new project was for research purposes only and not intended to develop an operational CBDC.
The bank began studying CBDCs in 2020, releasing a discussion paper in March of that year. The DCI responded with a discussion of how a CBDC could meet the objectives stated in the paper. The bank and the treasury headed up an exploratory task force on the matter last April, and the bank’s latest discussion paper on CBDC was released Thursday.