Spain’s central bank, the Bank of Spain (BDE) said it intends to launch an experimental program to begin testing wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (CDBCs) and is seeking collaboration proposals from local finance and technology institutions.
The bank will focus on three main areas with the program that seeks to simulate the movement of funds, experiment with the liquidation of financial assets, and analyze the benefits and drawbacks of introducing a wholesale CBDC to its current processes and infrastructure according to a translated Dec. 5 statement.
A wholesale CBDC refers to a digital currency typically for use by banks to keep reserves with a central bank, as compared to a retail or general-purpose CBDC that’s open to use by the public.
The program is “exclusive” to the BDE and it stated it was unrelated to work being undertaken in the European Union researching the use of a digital euro.
Bitcoin advocates were impressed with the bank’s writing, latching on to Santander’s introduction to bitcoin’s Lightning Network as an example.
The Lighting Network is a layer built on top of the Bitcoin Network that facilitates instant and cheap bitcoin payments.
Amboss CEO Jesse Shrader cited Mcdonalds and Starbucks SBUX-0.1% as well-known companies who have adopted lightning but said they did so in response to El Salvador’s Bitcoin Legal Tender law.
Shrader told me that companies like “MicroStrategy and Santander are recognizing the potential of lightning based on the technology,” rather than adopting it out of necessity for compliance purposes.
65% of Spaniards not interested in using digital euro – Bank of Spain report
While the Bank of Spain looks keen to welcome the potential adoption of the digital currency, it does not appear there is an appetite for the project among the Spanish population.
When the survey was carried out in 2022, 58 per cent of respondents said they would not use the digital euro in addition to their regular payment methods. However, that figure had risen one year on – with 65 per cent of those surveyed saying they would not use it to compliment other payment methods. Meanwhile, just 20 per cent of respondents said they would use the digital euro.
