# Central Bank Digital Currency
A digital [currency](currency.md) issued by a [central-banks](central-banks.md) often shorted as CBDC. The implementation and wise-scale use of CBDCs is a hypothetical technology. Many experimental implementations do not use a [blockchain](blockchain.md) and are based on centralized database technologies and do not require a [consensus-algorithm](consensus-algorithm.md). This makes CBDCs technical underpinnings significantly distinct from [crypto asset](cryptoasset.md) which are allegedly [decentralized](decentralization.md).

CBDCs are either based on an *account model* or *token model*.

CBDCs have been critized as being an extension of the surveillance state that conflicts with financial privacy norms.

## Examples

* Chinese Digital Yuan
* Bahama Sand Dollar
* Project Hamilton

## References

* Hockett, Robert C. 2019. ‘Money’s Past Is Fintech’s Future: Wildcat Crypto, the Digital Dollar, and Citizen Central Banking’.
* Bilotta, Nicola. n.d. CBDCs and Stablecoins: The Scramble for (Controllable) Anonymity. Instituto AffariInternazionali.
* Kiff, John, Jihad Alwazir, Sonja Davidovic, Aquiles Farias, Ashraf Khan, Tanai Khiaonarong, Majid Malaika, et al. 2020. ‘A Survey of Research on Retail Central Bank Digital Currency’. http://ssrn.com/paper=3639760.
* Korhonen, Outi, and Juho Rantala. 2021. ‘Blockchain Governance Challenges: Beyond Libertarianism’. AJIL Unbound 115: 408–12. https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2021.65.
* Nabilou, Hossein. 2019. ‘Central Bank Digital Currencies: Preliminary Legal Observations’. Journal of Banking Regulation.
* Steele, Graham. 2021. ‘The Miner of Last Resort: Digital Currency, Shadow Money and the Role of the Central Bank’. Technology and Government, Emerald Studies in Media and Communications, Forthcoming.