Governor Of The BoE Questions Need For The Digital Pound

Andrew Bailey, in charge of the BoE, pointed out that the UK already has a wholesale settlement system that needs a big update.

Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England (BoE), said he didn’t think there was a need for a digital pound soon after the finance ministers of countries in the eurozone agreed to keep working on a digital euro.

The BoE governor recently questioned the need for a wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), saying there is already a “wholesale central bank money settlement system with a major upgrade.”

Bailey also said there are no plans to eliminate cash in retail transactions. The head of the BoE thinks that retail payments don’t need to change. He told them:

“We have to be very clear what problem we are trying to solve here before we get carried away by the technology and the idea.”

Bailey’s comments come after new CBDC developments in the eurozone and recent comments from a former BoE adviser about the costs and risks of creating a CBDC.

On January 16, the finance ministers of the countries in the eurozone put out a statement supporting the European Central Bank’s study of a possible digital euro. The Eurogroup agreed that there needs to be more political talk about implementing a CBDC. The group also discussed the problems it was seeing, such as environmental effects, privacy, financial stability, and other issues.

On the same day, Tony Yates, a former BoE adviser, wrote an opinion piece in the Financial Times saying that developing CBDCs is not worth the costs and risks. Yates also questioned why CBDCs was created, calling them “suspicious.”

Iran and Russia are also considering making a new stablecoin backed by gold. A report from the Russian news agency Vedomosti says that Iran and Russia are working together to create a “token of the Persian Gulf region” so that people can do business across borders.