Research / BFI Working PaperFeb 13, 2024

On Digital Currencies

I discuss private and central-bank-issued digital currencies, summarizing my prior research. I argue that prices of private digital currencies such as bitcoin follow random walks or, more generally, risk adjusted martingales. For central bank digital currencies, I argue that they enhance the “CBDC trilemma” facing a central bank: out of the three objectives, price stability, efficiency, and monetary trust, it can achieve at most two.

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