2022 REPORT: ISSUING CENTRAL BANK DIGITAL CURRENCY ON ALGORAND

 

Central Banks around the globe are researching, developing, and even deploying digital currencies that have the power to foster economic growth and prosperity for citizens while preserving monetary value and maintaining flexible governance.  Compared to other digital currency proposals, the CBDC design proposed by Algorand in this report is simpler and more economical to implement and manage for central banks at scale.

Building on their 2021 research report, experts from across the Algorand ecosystem have come together again to share their latest findings on CBDCs and educate public leaders facing the reality of blockchain. Notably, this report includes a new section focused on on the benefits of Central Bank digital currency in the digital age.

What is included

  • The Benefits of Central Bank Digital Currency: Highlights four key trends of the digital era and explains why these provide a challenge for central banks. Also motivates why central banks should issue CBDC.
  • Designing Efficient CBDC: Outlines principles for designing efficient central bank digital currencies that Algorand has identified through our various CBDC projects. 
  • Economic Considerations when Issuing CBDC: Discusses economic implications when issuing a CBDC, from balance sheet and financial stability implications to  monetary policy consequences. 
  • The Algorand Protocol: An overview of the Algorand protocol, including design principles and a high-level overview of the protocol itself. 
  • Issuing Retail CBDC with Algorand: Algorand’s approach to issuing retail CBDC, including a detailed overview of relevant design considerations and  examples of use cases facilitated by the Algorand platform. In particular, we present the critical use cases of issuing CBDC when connectivity is limited and adjustable privacy requirements for low- and high-value transactions. 
  • Issuing Wholesale CBDC with Algorand: Algorand’s design approach to wholesale CBDC and the most relevant use cases; additional use cases are discussed  in detail in Appendix A.
  • Conclusion: Closing thoughts on why a hybrid CBDC model, built on a private instance of the open public Algorand blockchain in a  two-tier retail system is a unique approach from enterprise and other providers.

About The Authors

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Andrea Civelli - Senior Economist , Algorand, Inc

Andrea Civelli is a Senior Economist at Algorand and an Associate Professor in Economics at the Walton College of Business (University of Arkansas). His research interests focus on monetary policy transmission and inflation modeling, with a particular interest in the role of the banking sector and business loan supply in the propagation of macroeconomic shocks. His research has been published in numerous Economics and Financial journals. Andrea received a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2010, and also held visiting positions at UT Austin and NC State University.

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Co-Pierre Georg - Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town

Co-Pierre Georg is an Associate Professor at the University of Cape Town and holds the South African Reserve Bank Chair in Financial Stability Studies. Co-Pierre’s research interests focus on the nexus of financial innovation and financial stability. He obtained his PhD from the University of Jena in 2011 and has published both in finance and interdisciplinary journals. Co-Pierre has been a consultant at various central banks and held visiting positions at MIT, Oxford, Princeton, and Columbia University. Aside from being a Research Associate at the Oxford Martin School for the 21st Century, he is a Research Affiliate at the Columbia University Center for Global Legal Transformation. 

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Pietro Grassano - Former Business Solutions Director, Europe at Algorand, Inc

Pietro Grassano was the Business Solutions Director – Europe at Algorand. At J.P. Morgan Asset Management from 2002 until 2019, Pietro has been Country Head for France since 2014: beforehand he had been Head of Sales for Italy and responsible for business in Greece. Before 2002, he held commercial functions at BNP Paribas Asset Management in Milan. He has more than 20 years of experience in the asset management sector. He was previously a consultant in the financial pole of Andersen Consulting. Pietro started his career in Brussels, in a commodities trading company. He holds a Master in Economics and Social Sciences (DES) from Bocconi University in Milan, and a baccalaureate in humanism (maturità classica) at the “Andrea Doria” High School in Novi Ligure. He is a proud supporter of the Torino Calcio football team.

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Naveed Ihsanullah - Former Head of Engineering Research, Algorand, Inc

Naveed was VP of Engineering Research at Algorand where he focused on future technology and features for Algorand’s blockchain platform. He is a senior engineering leader and technologist with more than 20 years of experience and continues to be fascinated by distributed systems and performance. Most recently of Mozilla, Naveed was instrumental in designing and leading the Quantum Flow program that focused 400 engineers to double Firefox’s performance in just one year. Naveed also led the adoption of new technologies across all the major browsers (Chrome, Safari, and Firefox) to close the performance gap with native applications. These technologies include WebAssembly, SIMD.js, and Shared Array Buffer. Naveed is also previously of Carbon Black (then Bit9) where his teams developed next-generation application security software and cloud-base software reputation services. Passionate about improving how enterprises use technology Naveed has consulted on large organizational level projects for Fortune 500 companies including Boeing Jeppesen.