Today I want to talk about the new Sweden Digital Currency project.
Sweden’s central bank, in fact, is considering the possibility of issuing its own national virtual currency, but the technology behind it is yet to be revealed.
According to an article published today by The Financial Times, Riksbank wants to create the new virtual currency because of a strong decline in domestic cash use. In fact, according to a report, the amount of notes in circulation has declined 40% since 2009.
Deputy governor Cecilia Skingsley commented that the central bank wants to test various technologies. Although she did not mention blockchain drectly, the Financial Times explained that the distributed ledger might be one of the options the Sweden bank could consider.
“We need to do the homework because it’s not an option for the public sector to stay on the sidelines and see the private sector cut off access to central bank money for individuals.”
Skingsley said that the digital currency could be issued together with banknotes and coins, but the Riksbank do not want to encourage illegal activity.
Tomorrow Skingsley will give a speech and he might explain more details about the Sweden Digital Currency project.
With this announcement, Sweden will become the latest country to have its own central bank considering to issue a new digital currency, an idea that for the greatest part of nations meant doing several reseatches related to blockchain-based cryptocurrencies.
During the latest few months, the Bank of England has started to discuss and test issuing its own digital currency using the blockchain; and the People’s Bank of China is investigating the idea too.
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