MIT Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) announces research collaboration with the Bank of England on central bank digital currency

The Bank of England announced an agreement to collaborate on a twelve-month Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) research project with MIT Digital Currency Initiative. The agreement supports and builds on DCI’s ongoing research into CBDC, while also contributing to the Bank of England’s wider research and exploration of central bank digital currencies. While no decision has been made on whether or not to introduce a CBDC in the UK, the work will investigate and experiment with potential CBDC technology designs and approaches, and evaluate key tradeoffs, opportunities, and risks. This type of research can help inform wider policy development by contributing important technical ideas and questions. 

As part of OpenCBDC, DCI’s open-source codebase and research initiative, MIT DCI aims to fill this gap by engaging technologists, user researchers, central bankers, private sector leaders, and academics in service of a more accessible, trusted, fair, and resilient economy. We don’t yet know if or in what contexts  CBDCs can help improve the broader international monetary system, or how they might be best designed to do so, but we believe engaging in technical research is an important step in answering these questions.

MIT DCI’s interest in this collaboration with the Bank of England stems from a desire to have, as much as possible, a hand in ensuring that neutral, responsible research is being done with this technology before any policy decisions are made. Building and experimenting helps us understand the problems and challenges better, putting us in a unique position to help shape the framework for a CBDC, if one were eventually built and deployed, that emphasizes privacy, user agency, and financial equity.