Central banks around the world, more precisely 86% of all central banks worldwide, are currently assessing the benefits and challenges of issuing central bank digital currencies. While the reasons for doing so vary significantly from financial inclusion to monetary policy or consumer protection, the trend is clear. More and more central banks projects are moving to a pilot or development phase, as is the case for example in Canada, Sweden, Brazil or China. CBDCs will be a strong focus of the #DES21, particularly the ECB project on a digital euro.

Institutional interest in crypto-assets, primarily Bitcoin, picked up significant steam. Publicly traded companies like Microstrategy and Tesla are shifting parts of their capital reserves into Bitcoin. In the meantime, some of the biggest financial companies in the world, amongst other Paypal, VISA or Mastercard, are starting to build on- and off-ramps for crypto-assets and related services. The result are not only changes in prices and market capitalisation, but potentially also the often talked about mainstream adoption.

Spurred by the Diem Project (formerly Libra) initiated by Facebook, the topic of (global) stablecoins and private forms of money came to the highest political and regulatory attention, with international working groups in the EU-Commission, the ECB, the FED, the FSB, the G7, the FATF and other institutions being set up. In the background of this regulatory attention and political headwind, already existing stablecoins like Tether or USDC are rising dramatically, with a total stablecoin market cap jumping from under 5 billion in early 2020 to over 100 billion in mid 2021.

What kind of money are we going to use and how are we going to pay in the future? Are private forms of money such as global stablecoins or company coins going to gain traction? Will we pay with decentralized crypto-assets such as Bitcoin or Ether? How will central bank digital currencies co-exist or compete with private forms of money and payment. Are we entering an era of currency competition? And how will Distributed Ledger Technology and Blockchain disrupt current payment systems? Join the #DES21 to discuss the future of money and payments with us.