France’s central bank, Banque de France (BDF), has kicked off the second phase of experimentation with a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) and plans to launch it by as early as 2023. Banque de France To Launch CBDC By 2023 In a speech on Tuesday at the 2022 Paris Europlace International Financial Forum, Banque de France (BDF) Governor François Villeroy de Galhau announced that the central bank expects to have a wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in operation by 2023. “We want to get closer to a viable prototype, testing it in practice with more private actors and more foreign central banks in the second half of 2022 and in 2023.” “This work ensures that we stand ready to bring central bank money as a settlement asset as early as 2023, with the implementation of the European pilot regime. This pilot regime will offer a regulatory framework to support the financial asset tokenisation trend.” DLT Technology and AMM The Bank of France further identified two “critical use cases” for wholesale CBDCs. One of them includes the tokenization of securities and the enhancement of cross-border and cross-currency settlements. Galhau further pointed out that the bank has built its own DLT technology as well as an Automated Market Maker (AMM) platform inspired by the DeFi markets. The AMM is expected to serve as the basis of a multi-CBDC platform where different central banks come together to enable fast, automated, a...
