New cryptocurrencies are emerging almost daily, and many interested parties are wondering whether central banks should issue their own versions. But what might central bank cryptocurrencies (CBCCs) look like and would they be useful? This feature provides a taxonomy of money that identifies two...

Dinero Electrónico was a mobile payment system developed by the Banco Central del Ecuador that allowed citizens to transfer USD balances in real-time from person to person using basic cell phones. The program operated between 2014 and 2018. Key drivers of the program were increasing financial...

This paper explains the nature of interest rates in the U.S. federal funds market after the 2007-09 financial crisis. We build a model of the over-the-counter lending market that incorporates new aspects of the financial system: abundance of liquidity, different regulatory standards for banks,...

We explore the implications of introducing an interest-bearing central bank digital currency (CBDC) through commercial banks that differ in size. Banks of heterogeneous sizes offer different convenience properties to depositors, which the CBDC adopts. The large bank gives depositors a higher...

Private tokenised monies that circulate as bearer instruments, like stablecoins, may entail departures in their relative exchange values away from par in violation of the “singleness of money”. In contrast, tokenised deposits that do not circulate as bearer instruments but rather settle in...

We explore the implications of introducing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) through commercial banks that differ in size. We focus on two design features of CBDCs: the interest rate and payment convenience. These features correspond to the "store of value" and "medium of exchange"...