The President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has revealed details of the Fed’s ongoing research into a potential digital dollar.
Speaking in a keynote address on September 23, Loretta Mester emphasized that the Federal Reserve has been exploring central bank digital currencies (CBDC) since before the pandemic, noting that its Board of Governors has been “building and testing a range of distributed ledger platforms to understand their potential benefits and tradeoffs.”
She also noted initiatives from regional Federal Reserve branches, including a multi-year partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Boston Fed, in addition to collaboration between the Fed’s New York Branch and the Bank for International Settlements.
Despite the ongoing research, Mester asserted that the initiatives do not “signal any decision by the Federal…