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My SODA colleague Chris Ostrowski and Chris Hayes, in another CoinDesk article, make three predictions on the landscape for CBDCs and stablecoins in Europe and in the U.S. based on the trends they've seen through engagement with central bankers and policymakers.

SODA CEO and co-founder Chris Ostrowski and I wrote an article for CoinDesk on the "test and deploy" approach to retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) project management. The "test and deploy" aims at narrow use cases, allowing for an abbreviated and more agile product development cycle, with rapid iterations through the proof-of-concept, prototype and pilot phases. This allows retail CBDC to be issued to real end users in a safe and controlled manner to offer insight into user demand and experience.

Magyar Nemzeti Bank has collaborated with the Sovereign Official Digital Association (SODA) to issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on a private blockchain. By successfully participating in financial literacy quizzes, Hungarian coin collectors and NFT enthusiasts are being awarded central bank-issued tokens and then swapping and trading them on the Money Museum mobile application. This is part of a contest to win a set of limited edition commemorative coins. As any member of the public can use the blockchain to collect, swap and register their ownership of the coins, this type of activity - though gamified - this is arguably a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot.

SODA's Chris Ostrowski published an article that makes the case for some sort of public digital money that will not be at the mercy of organizations that use our payment dependency for their own ends. If we don't create some form of public digital money, in which a democratically elected government sets the framework (as they do with cash) on how it is used, then we will inevitably see more and more cases where people are made 'non-persons' like Nigel Farage recently was by Natwest. A central bank digital currency (CBDC) is the best guarantee for our (cash like) rights, but it's so hard to get this side of the story out there, thanks to the 'CBDC = government control' narrative.

In this month's Central Bank Payment News (CBPN) spotlight, I wrote about past experiments with offline digital payments, technical considerations for offline digital currency, and what the future might hold for offline central bank digital currency (CBDC).