The US Just Announced Plans to Test Five Digital Currencies

A nonprofit effort called the Digital Dollar Project declared its intentions to launch five pilot programs throughout the next 12 months to test the possible deployment of a central bank digital currency in the U.S. — the first such effort of its kind domestically.

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Accenture Plc will fund the private-sector pilots, pooling efforts from retailers, financial firms, NGOs, and more. The goal is to build data capable of informing U.S. policymakers when or if they do eventually develop a digital dollar. The Digital Dollar Project was founded in 2020 as a collaboration between the Digital Dollar Foundation and Accenture to investigate and promote research into a central bank digital currency (CBDC).

“There are conferences and papers coming out every week around the world on CBDCs based on data from other countries,” said Co-Founder of the Digital Dollar Foundation Christopher Giancarlo — who is also the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, to Reuters. “What there is not, is any real data and testing from the United States to inform that debate.”