Bank Of Japan To Run Digital Currency Experiment With Country’s Megabanks

• Bank Of Japan To Run Digital Currency Experiment With Country’s Megabanks
  by Niamh Harris, https://newspunch.com/
  Japan’s central bank is planning to run a digital currency (CBDC) experiment with the country’s major financial players.
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  On Wednesday Nikkei reported that the Bank of Japan had teamed up with three megabanks and regional financial institutionsto start a digital yen trial in spring 2023. If all goes according to plan the BOJ may go ahead and release a CBDC in 2026. 
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  Last week, major financial institutions in the U.S also announced they were working with the Federal Reserve to test a digital currency platform. Meanwhile, privacy advocates have voiced concerns that CBDCs will allow the state to snoop on citizens’ spending.
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  Yahoo Finance reports: The BOJ’s experiment will explore how deposits and withdrawals can work with a digital yen, today’s report noted. A CBDC is a digital version of a state’s fiat currency—like the U.S. dollar or the euro—backed by a central bank. CBDCs are digital assets, but are different from the likes of Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Dogecoin.
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  This is because Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are decentralized; their ledger of transactions is maintained and checked by a distributed network of validators. CBDCs, by contrast, are centralized: a central power—the government or central bank—controls them. Different countries around the world are in different stages of researching and releasing CBDCs.
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