The Bank of England and the UK Treasury are actively pursuing the case for a CBDC

A new initiative in the UK is looking to advance the case for retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), publishing a green paper and preparing a set of pilots. The Bank of England and the U.K. Treasury have been actively pursuing the case for a central bank digital currency, known as Britcoin, as the use of cash dwindles and private digital currencies pose a threat to monetary sovereignty. However, the idea has met with considerable resistance, most recently from an aristocratic committee in the House of Lords, which concluded last month that there is no compelling case for a digital pound. The new project, an initiative led by the Payments Association, paywith.glass and other private industry stakeholders and supported by The Boston Consulting Group, hopes to drive dialogue through the Green Paper, which will be followed by real-world pilots, Study design issues and how to reduce risk. The project is forming a private consortium to pilot using dSterling, a CBDC-like digital settlement asset. The focus will be on test cases including retail payments, cross-border transactions Tokenisation-as-a-Service, and how to serve payment institutions and e-money issuers.