In an outcome streamed alive on Midweek, Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey and deputy governor for fiscal stability Sir Jon Cunliffe answered questions from lawmakers from the Economic Diplomacy Committee. When asked about the growth of innovation surrounding digital currencies in the country, Sir Cunliffe gave the following comment:

"It's quite difficult to predict how innovators will take money and actually use money going forward. Just we are starting to see programmable money existence used in the crypto world. And I would look we would come across a similar revolution in the functionality of money driven by engineering science."

Sir Jon Cunliffe discussing CBDCs | Source: Parliamentlive.goggle box

The Bank of England is currently exploring options to implement a digital pound CBDC for retail payments. A job forcefulness backside the CBDC is also investigating the use of a digital pound for distributing payrolls, pensions, etc.

In supporting the initiative, Sir Cunliffe cites the apace declining use of cash in the Britain in recent years — which was greatly accelerated past the appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic that discouraged concrete contact in transactions. An estimated 30% of transactions in the country now occur via e-commerce.

When asked about the potential demand of a digital pound CBDC, Sir Cunliffe said:

"We've modeled a very prudent assumption, which is that basically 20% of [household and corporate transactional] deposits based in the banking system could move out of the banking system and into central banking concern digital money."

Withal, Sir Cunliffe admitted that the current state of crypto affairs could potentially threaten fiscal stability within the land. The market cap on cryptocurrencies has surged to $2.6 trillion in a very brusque time, with an estimated 95% of digital assets being unbanked and 5% consisting of stablecoins. On the opposite side of the Atlantic, the United States has less of a positive outlook, saying that regulated stablecoins designed past the private sector brand CBDCs redundant.