The heads from 6 major central banks including the European Central Bank and Bank of Japan will have their first meeting in mid-April regarding shared research on virtual currencies, reported Nikkei newspaper on Thursday.

Just last month, the central banks of the eurozone, Britain, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, and Japan, announced a plan to share their findings regarding the issues around the future introduction of central bank digital currencies.

The 6 central bankers and the Bank of International Settlements will gather in Washington this April to brainstorm ways to analyze cross-border settlement and security concerns.

They plan to issue an interim report on their discussion in June and the final report around autumn.

While the likes of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Federal Reserve Chairman don't see the need to issue a digital dollar in the near future, the Fed does see the need for active public-private sector discussions on regulatory issues related to digital currencies and the threat to the stability of financial systems. Fed board member Lael Brainard said Wednesday in a speech at a symposium in California,

“Given the dollar’s important role, it is essential that we remain on the frontier of research and policy development regarding CBDC (central bank digital currency).”

China meanwhile is moving towards issuing a digital yuan. Last month, the People's Bank of China said that the development of government-backed digital currency is progressing “smoothly.”

In other news, according to a survey published by Omfif, central banks are the preferred issuers of digital currency than tech giant companies.

Social media giant Facebook has been planning to bank the billions of under and unbanked population through its cryptocurrency Libra. While Facebook has been banking on its large global users base to launch it, the latest poll by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum found that people have more faith in central banks.

More than half of the respondents of the survey of 13,000 people in 13 countries said they would prefer a digital currency issued by their monetary authority than major internet technology companies which are the least trusted.

A survey of BIS also determined that an increasing number of central banks are looking into issuing digital currencies. Facebook’s digital currency plans, however, have been met with skepticism with authorities concerned about users’ privacy and the threat it may pose to fiat currencies' sovereignty.

Bitcoin price in Telegram @btc_price_every_hour

318 +