Sweden has taken several steps towards its own central bank digital currency, or CBDC, called the e-krona. Sveriges Riksbank, the country’s central bank, now seeks to experiment with the asset using a non-simulated part.
As reported by Reuters, Riksbank detailed on Friday through a statement: “The e-krona pilot is therefore no longer having only simulated participants to cooperate with external participants in the test environment”. The experiment will involve participation between Riksbank and Handelsbanken, a network of retail banks based in Sweden.
In January, Riksbank developed its R3 e-krona proof-of-concept solution, a distributed reason technology, or DLT, from R3. Sweden has been on the path of the CBDC for over a year. April brought the news that the country had finished the initial part of its CBDC pilot.
The Riksbank statement reported by Reuters also included Handelsbanken noting: “For Handelsbanken, the project means the opportunity to participate in what may be the first digital money issued by the world’s central bank to be made available to the public.”
CBDCs were a hot topic in 2020, with countries continuing their search in 2021. China led widely in terms of CBDC’s ambition, although the Bahamas came on the scene last fall with the CBDC’s first launch, calling its currency Sand Dollar. Recently, Lael Brainard, the governor of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, expressed the importance of a CBDC in terms of the country’s position as a world reserve currency.
Read more: https://bulletinbits.com/sweden-advances-in-testing-its-national-cbdc-the-e-krona/
