In recent months, the race for the development of a central bank digital currency is gaining pace. The last signal was launched by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who publicly stated the need to invest public resources in blockchain, slated to be the core technology of the future. The euphoria of the Chinese market following the presidential declaration induced Mark Zuckerberg — who had been encountering considerable resistance from Western authorities since the beginning of the Libra project — to raise the alarm on an alleged Chinese overtaking of digital currency technology.
A CBDC is a new type of legal tender which will expand the public’s digital access to central bank accounts, which is limited to commercial banks today. As a result, this tool will combine the digital nature of bank deposits with the classic advantages of cash in daily transactions. A key point to carefully consider, though, is, To what extent is this the case? Would the new currency take the form of a personal account at the central bank that can pay positive interest rates, or that of an anonymous digital token without interest, like classic cryptocurrencies?