The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) published a technical white paper on retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) on Monday, strengthening its position to launch a digital order.
Titled “e-HKD: A Tech Perspective,” the white paper explores the idea and feasibility of launching a digital Hong Kong dollar (e-HKD) for its domestic and cross-border markets.
The white paper came after the de facto central bank confirmed in mid-2021 that it plans to study a central bank digital currency for domestic and retail use. However, HKMA has been part of research into the wholesale use of central bank digital currencies with a host of other international peers since 2017.
“The white paper represents the first step in our technical exploration of e-HKD,” said Eddy Yu, CEO of HKMA. “The knowledge gained from this research, combined with the experience gained from other CBDC projects, will help provide further study and deliberation on the technical design of e-HKD.”
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collaborative effort
The monetary regulator is jointly working on a CBDC building model with the Hong Kong BIS Innovation Center. According to HKMA, it is one of the first CBDC white papers to unveil a technical architecture for a potential digital order.
Hong Kong is a Chinese autonomous territory that follows the “one country, two systems” framework. The central banks of Hong Kong and China earlier started talks to test the digital yuan in the autonomous region, but no further developments were disclosed about that.
“The architecture proposed in this white paper is most notable for its ability to flexibly and efficiently generate different two-tier distribution models of rCBDC with breakthroughs in privacy, transaction traceability, and cross-ledger synchronization for discrete ledgers,” the latest e-HKD white paper stated. .