Overview
- The BOJ will run technical experiments to settle central bank money as current account deposits on blockchains, focusing on domestic interbank transfers and securities settlement while testing connections to existing systems.
- Kazuo Ueda emphasized central bank money as the economy’s anchor of trust and warned that interoperability is needed to prevent fragmentation across multiple ledgers.
- Programmable features such as atomic transactions are a key focus, with potential to streamline delivery‑versus‑payment and other automated settlement processes.
- Analysts say using distributed ledgers for reserves could enable instant, 24/7 settlement and reduce gridlock risk during market stress.
- Alongside the wholesale sandbox, the retail CBDC pilot remains active with no issuance decision yet, and the BOJ continues work on Project Agorá to explore tokenized central bank deposits for cross‑border payments.