Taiwan central bank governor considers interest-free CBDC design to prevent fiat deposit flight
As reported by native information outlet bnext.com on Wednesday, Chin-long Yang, governor of the Central Financial institution of the Republic of China (Taiwan), recommended a no-interest design for the nation’s central financial institution digital forex, or CBDC, pilot. In explaining the choice, Yang mentioned {that a} CBDC the place curiosity is paid on digital asset deposits would probably develop into a alternative for fiat New Taiwan greenback (NT$) deposits in banks. “As soon as the banks’ obtainable deposits lower,” Yang defined, “it might result in a corresponding enhance in the price of financing and thereby enhance the price of borrowing for customers.”
Yang additional warned that even interest-free CBDCs may result in “digital financial institution runs” throughout occasions of economic instability and rapidly spiral right into a liquidity disaster for monetary establishments. However nonetheless, the nation’s central financial institution governor acknowledged a surge in demand for digital fee options lately:
“The ratio of digital funds as a % of all funds in Taiwan has risen from 40% in 2017 to 60% in Q1 2022. Due to this fact, there’s the potential of larger demand within the populace for a CBDC that gives a secure, trusted, no-commission, no credit score danger and no liquidity danger type of digital fee answer.”
Taiwan is at present within the second stage of its CBDC pilot program, the place its central financial institution gives the CBDC to 5 chosen Taiwanese banks for distribution amongst customers. Based mostly on the pilot program outcomes, the central financial institution will proceed to the subsequent steps. Nonetheless, it has already been recognized in trials that the distributed ledger expertise throughout the CBDC couldn’t deal with excessive frequency, excessive quantity shopper transactions. One other level of concern is the misplaced performance of the fee answer within the occasion of energy outages.
