The Bank of England has teamed up with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a twelve-month research project on central bank digital currencies.
The Bank says it will partner with the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) team to explore potential technical challenges, trade-offs, opportunities and risks involved in designing a CBDC system.
The collaboration forms part of the Bank’s wider ‘research and exploration’ into CBDC, and will be focused on exploration and experimentation of potential technology approaches.
The UK central bank joins the Bank of Canada and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on MIT's CBDC roster.
"This work is focused on exploratory technology research and is not intended to develop an operational CBDC," states the Bank of England. "No decision has been made on whether to introduce a CBDC in the UK, which would be a major national infrastructure project. Undertaking this type of technical research will help inform wider policy thinking around CBDC."