CBDC

Central bank digital currency — a digital form of a nation's money issued directly by its central bank.

A CBDC is government money in purely digital form, issued and backed by the central bank itself rather than a commercial bank or a crypto network. Unlike cryptocurrencies, a CBDC is centralized and carries no exchange-rate risk against the national currency — it simply is the national currency. Over a hundred countries are researching them; China's digital yuan is the largest pilot. Debates center on privacy (the state could see transactions) and on what happens to commercial banks if citizens can hold accounts at the central bank directly.

The central bank's pilot CBDC lets citizens pay each other digitally without a commercial bank in the middle.