Bank for International Settlements Successfully Tests Wholesale CBDC

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), with the participation of the Swiss National Bank and Switzerland’s largest stock exchange, SIX Swiss Exchange, during the tests confirmed the feasibility of using national digital currencies (CBDC) to settle tokenised assets.

Project Helvetia shows the feasibility of two proofs-of-concept, using near-live systems to settle digital assets on a distributed ledger with central bank money #BISInnovationHub #CBDC #Fintech #DLT @SNB_BNS_en @SDX_global @sixgroup https://t.co/dwIlt13W8N pic.twitter.com/j9heAH10t7

— Bank for International Settlements (@BIS_org) December 3, 2020

As part of the concept validation, participants in the Helvetia project examined the legal and technical feasibility of settling digital assets. They compared the issuance of a wholesale CBDC based on a DLT platform and its integration with the existing wholesale payments system.

Retail CBDCs or their universal counterparts, envisaged to support other use cases and whose issuance could carry various political consequences, were not part of the concept tests.

The tests were conducted at BIS’s Innovation Hub. The Swiss National Bank stressed that they are not a signal of readiness to issue a wholesale CBDC or to permit settlements for trades on SIX Group’s SDX trading blockchain platform in the Swiss interbank clearing system.

The results demonstrated the advantages of wholesale CBDC and created conditions for further experiments. Their aim will be to assess the impact of issuing digital currencies on the future of the financial system.

“If wholesale CBDCs are to realise their potential as a new means of settlement, their structure and consequences deserve careful study and consideration. Given the speed of digital transformation, central banks must learn to make well-founded policy decisions quickly,” said Benoît Cœuré, head of the BIS Innovation Hub.

The ECB is also conducting experiments with CBDC and capital markets

What is a central bank digital currency (CBDC)?

Follow ForkLog news on Telegram: ForkLog FEED — full news feed, ForkLog — the most important news and polls.