Design Handbook for Central Bank Digital Currencies

Central banks around the world are evaluating the option of issuing a centrally banked digital currency (CBDC). There are a number of policy objectives attributed to offering a CBDC. Curiously, some of the stated objectives are contradictory. This confusion is a consequence of a very broad design landscape, which runs contrary to the conventional wisdom that suggests CBDCs can be broken into 2 or 4 main categories. In this paper, we systematically iterate through 8 key design decisions, most of which have 3 or more possible designs. Our design landscape is based on dozens of whitepapers and technical reports issued by central banks, international financial institutions, and technology firms. By laying out a comprehensive set of options, we offer central banks a finer grained approach to tailoring a design that meets their specific objectives—objectives that will change from country to country.