Kazushige Kamiyama, the lead of the Bank of Japan’s CBDC initiative, has said no single central bank-backed digital currency would dominate global finance, in the latest comments from policymakers in Japan on CBDCs. Kamiyama’s remarks come a week after junior finance minister Kenji Okamura expressed concerns about the advanced development of China’s CBDC, after suggesting their “first-mover advantage” could see Japan and other nations trailing the digital yuan.
“I don’t think a single digital currency will dominate the world.”
Responding to these concerns, BoJ’s CBDC head Kamiyama said that first-mover could actually become a disadvantage and that the likely outcome would be no single dominant global digital currency. “I don’t think a single digital currency will dominate the world, as long as each country makes full efforts to improve its settlement system,” he added. He further noted that the Japanese central bank was closely monitoring regional and global counterparts in their progress on CBDCs, with a view to learning from their projects to inform their own. “We’d like to keep tabs on what other central banks are doing and learn from them, not just from China but from other countries,” he noted.
Bank of Japan to start experimenting with its CBDC starting next year.
As reported earlier, Japan’s central bank said that it would begin experimenting next year on how to operate its own central bank-backed digital currency. The move came in tandem with an announcement by a group of seven major central banks, including the Bank of Japan, on what they see as core features of a CBDC such as resilience and a clear legal framework. The central bank said it would conduct the first phase of experiments on basic functions core to CBDCs, such as issuance and distribution, early in the fiscal year beginning in April 2021.
