The Bank of Canada, in conjunction with university researchers, is designing digital currency in preparation for a future in which money is completely digital.
The Bank of Canada and researchers at the University of Toronto and York University are designing a “Central Bank Digital Loonie” (CBDL) as a “protective measure against technologies that challenge bank-based payments and monetary policy transmission mechanisms,” according to a news report in The Varsity, the University of Toronto’s student newspaper.
University of Toronto professors Andreas Veneris and Andreas Park, says the CBDL would be equivalent to the Canadian dollar.
“The future of money is… going to be entirely digital,” says Park. “It’s going to live on a common infrastructure of some form. You will have the ability to transfer money back and forth instantaneously… You will have the ability to do programmable money, so you can use your money shifted to particular investments to use it in the Internet of Things payment methods.”