The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has released a document outlining its own specific approach to CBDCs from a Japan-centric perspective.
It has been reported that the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), in collaboration with a group of seven central banks, published its first joint report into central bank digital currencies, focusing on the foundational principles and core features of CBDCs.
However, according to the BoJ report, it will begin the first of several testing phases for its own CBDC sometime in 2021, as this will include the development of a test environment for the currency and experiments on its basement functions as a payment instrument.
Japan's central bank stresses that a #CBDC must support offline use in the country, due to the prevalence of natural disasters. https://t.co/CN0O0MadRd — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) October 9, 2020
The BoJ report notes that a core feature of the digital currency must be resilience in the face of infrastructure disrupted by force Majeure.
It stated:
“Offline use in times of system and network failures as well as electrical outages is also important for Japan, given the frequent occurrence of natural disasters.”
Likewise, the report gives no details on how providing against such events might be achieved, although there are solutions that address potential electrical or network failures for Bitcoin (BTC) and other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies.
Thus, the BIS digital currency research group was announced in January 2020 and included central banks from Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, and the European Central Bank.
Source: Cointelegraph | Image: The Industry Spread