Project New Era – Why the Government needs the Private Sector to test Digital Currencies

With Paul Sisnett, CEO of SMD Group, and Kunal Jhanji, Partner & MD at Boston Consulting Group

Project New Era is a privately-led, cross-industry initiative that will evaluate a future digital currency ecosystem in the UK that could include stablecoins and a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Differing from other initiatives which seek to promote policy theories for digital currencies, Project New Era is about testing them in practice through a private sector pilot, using a live Digital Sterling (‘dSterling’) asset.

The pilot, set to launch in September, will be run by the private consortium but aims to engage with The Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payments Systems Regulator to update them around the progress and learnings in order to help them make informed decisions on implementing a CBDC in the future. These authorities are not, however, directly involved in the pilot itself.

Elements being investigated include evaluating the risks, both from macroeconomic and technical aspects, looking at cybersecurity, resilience, and ease of integration in order to generate a fully simulated environment for digital currencies and perhaps eventually a CBDC for the UK.

Listen to the full interview here