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The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) together with seven central banks will explore how tokenization of wholesale central bank money and commercial bank deposits on programmable platforms can improve the monetary system. Project Agorá's primary area of exploration will be to increase the speed and integrity of international payments, while lowering costs by building on the BIS's proposed unified ledger concept. The BIS will issue a call for expressions of interest to private financial institutions, with the Institute of International Finance (IIF) acting as the intermediary and convener, to join the project.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Project mBridge is accepting value added products and new use cases as it reaches minimum viable product stage (MVP). The project aims to explore multi-central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform shared among participating central banks and commercial banks, built on distributed ledger technology (DLT) to enable instant cross-border payments and settlement. The project was launched in 2021 by the BIS Innovation Hub, in collaboration with the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the People's Bank of China and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The Saudi Central Bank is now joining mBridge as a full participant. There are also now more than 26 observing members.

"The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) recently released a survey on central bank digital currency (CBDC). This review is in two sections, the first discusses the BIS survey and the second analyses the issues facing central banks as their work on CBDC progresses."

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Bank of England today launched the BIS Innovation Hub London Centre. The Hub's work program is currently focused on the use of technological innovation in supervision and regulation (suptech and regtech); next-generation financial market infrastructures; central bank digital currency (CBDC); open finance; cyber security; and green finance. Work related to these themes is distributed across the various Hub Centres.

he Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper that examines the views toward CBDCs Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region central banks , drawing on their responses to a survey conducted by the BIS in late 2020 and early 2021. It also examines whether the engagement of LAC central banks with CBDCs can be explained by the structural characteristics of their economies. Thirdly, it reviews the long list of potential benefits, costs and risks of CBDCs, focusing on their relevance to the LAC economies. Finally, the paper reviews the design choices that central banks face and the actual choices made by a number of central banks in the region.

The New York Fed launched the New York Innovation Center (NYIC), to advance a strategic partnership with the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub. As part of the New York Fed, the NYIC is collaborating with the Federal Reserve System, the BIS Innovation Hub, and public and private sector experts to validate, design, build, and launch new financial technology products and services for the central bank community.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published a paper on cross-border payment system interoperability. It illustrates the public and private sector options using four stylized models, ordered in increasing complexity and cost but also greater efficiency - a single access point, bilateral link, hub and spoke or a common platform (see below). The BIS Innovation Hub is putting theory into practice with several innovative projects to foster interoperability across the four stylized models.

The BIS published a report on the key insights and lessons learnt from its Innovation Hub's 12 central bank digital currency (CBDC) projects. For domestic use cases, two projects investigate wholesale CBDC (wCBDC) and five look at retail CBDC (rCBDC). Across borders, four experiments look at wCBDC and one looks at rCBDC. For each category, the report discusses key insights and lessons learnt from the perspectives of desirability, feasibility and viability. The report also contains tables and an annex that give details of the projects I haven't seen before.

The BIS published a survey, carried out in late 2022, of 86 central banks on their views and plans regarding central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). 93% are engaged in some form of CBDC work and that the work on retail CBDC is more advanced than on wholesale CBDC. The results also indicate that emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) are more advanced in their CBDC work than advanced economies (AEs). In addition, 80% of central banks surveyed see potential value in having both a retail CBDC and a fast payment system (FPS), because CBDC allows access to a wider set of financial institutions and the unbanked population. Also, programmability and offline payments were mentioned as features that an FPS may not provide.

he Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) are joining forces to foster innovation and financial inclusion in Latin America and the Caribbean by exploring and developing technology that can help to modernise the region's financial systems. The first collaboration between the two institutions will be on Project FuSSE (Fully Scalable Settlement Engine, pronounced as fyooz). Project FuSSE aims to design and test backend functionality that can be adapted to multiple types of infrastructures, allowing them to process a continuously growing number of transactions. FuSSE aims to test highly scalable systems in three dimensions: the number of transactions, the types of assets and the number of participants. The technology could support payment systems, security settlement systems or even central bank digital currencies.

According to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) the latest Project mBridge proof-of-concept (PoC) test has demonstrated that the wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) platform can speed up cross-border payments at reduced cost and with better transparency. Project mBridge is a collaboration between the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), HKMA, and the central banks of China,  Thailand, and United Arab Emirates, and commercial banks from each of those jurisdictions. More central banks are slated to join the platform, and a minimum viable product, with the aim of paving the way for the gradual commercialization will soon be launched. https://www.bis.org/review/r230925d.htm

Perry Warjiyo, the Governor of the Bank Indonesia (BI), provided an update on the central banks's CBDC plans. It sounds like the BI is leaning towards a distributed ledger technology (DLT) based platform, but it is undecided as to whther it will be a retail or wholesale digital currency. Building in interoperability will be important to open up the possibility of cross-border payments, particularly in the ASEAN+5 region, where there is already cooperation with Thailand and Malaysia through the support for the implementation of QR Cross Border and Local Currency Settlement (LCS).

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of Israel, Norway and Sweden are launching Project Icebreaker, a joint exploration of how central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) can be used for international retail and remittance payments. using a hub-and-spoke model. The project will run through the end of the year, with a final report expected in the first quarter of 2023.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) published an interim report on Project Mariana, which investigates combining FX trading and settlement in cross-border transactions into a single instantaneous step using automated market makers (AMMs) and wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to eliminate credit and settlement risk. The project also examined cross-border interoperability using wholesale CBDC based on a uniform technical standard, as a way to future-proof CBDC developments. In addition, Mariana investigated asset mobility between different blockchain-based networks using bridges.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Bank Indonesia announced the 21 shortlisted finalists for the G20 TechSprint CBDC challenge. The shortlisted teams now have until the end of August to complete their prototypes, which will then be judged by an independent expert panel convened by Bank Indonesia. Winners for each of the three categories will be announced in October ahead of the G20 Summit. Among the shortlisted were BitMint, R3, Ripple, S.e.A. (Stellar, eCurrency and ANZ), Bitt-IDEMIA, Crunchfish, and Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) Filia.

Cambridge University's Centre for Alternative Finance has announced a collaboration with the IMF, the BIS and others to conduct crypto research. The Cambridge Digital Assets Programme, aims to bring further insight into the growing digital asset industry by providing data-driven insights through collaborative research involving public and private sector stakeholders. The research agenda for the Programme will be centered around three workstreams. The first is focused on environmental implications and broader environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations of digital assets and their associated services. The second will look at the processes and configurations of distributed financial market infrastructure (dFMI), and the third on crypto-assets, stablecoins, central bank digital currency (CBDC), as well as enterprise and consumer tokens.

Cecilia Skingsley, First Deputy Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, appointed to head the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub. The Hub serves as a platform for central bank collaboration in building technological solutions to problems in the financial sector. Five Hub Centers are already operating in Hong Kong, London, Singapore, Stockholm and Switzerland. Two more, in Frankfurt/Paris and Toronto, are expected to open later this year. The Innovation Hub also has in place a Strategic Partnership with the Federal Reserve System.

90% of the 81 central banks surveyed by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are exploring central bank digital currency (CBDC). Compared with last year's survey, the share of  central banks currently developing a CBDC or running a pilot almost doubled from 14% to 26%, and 62% are conducting experiments or proofs-of-concept. The results show that the work on retail CBDCs is at a more advanced stage than the work on wholesale CBDCs. Almost one fifth of central banks are developing or testing a retail CBDC, which is twice the share of central banks building or piloting a wholesale CBDC, which is increasingly driven by reasons related to cross-border payments efficiency. 68% of the surveyed central banks consider that they are likely to or might possibly issue a retail CBDC in either the short or medium term.

According to a 42-page chapter in the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) 2022 Annual Economic Report crypto's structural flaws make it an unsuitable basis for a monetary system, and instead envisions a future where programmability and tokenization are built on top of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Structural flaws make the crypto universe unsuitable as the basis for a monetary system: because it lacks a stable nominal anchor, while limits to its scalability result in fragmentation. Contrary to the decentralization narrative, crypto often relies on unregulated intermediaries that pose financial risks.

A new Bank for International Settlements (BIS) note provides estimates of the extent of "cryptoization" in emerging market economies (EMEs). In countries with volatile and/or depreciating exchange rates, holders of domestic fiat currencies have incentives to shift into reserve currency-pegged stablecoins, which conveniently help avoid capital controls and financial integrity requirements. The BIS note found that trading of US dollar-linked stablecoins vis-à-vis some EME currencies has soared since 2020, particularly against the Turkish lira and the Brazilian real. In addition, trading of risky crypto-assets, such as Bitcoin, also spiked in some EMEs facing depreciation pressure.