A US Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) has a plethora of benefits for financial inclusion and banking efficiency, witnesses testified at a US senate subcommittee hearing on Wednesday. However, lawmakers’ initial concerns were focused on decentralized, blockchain-based bitcoin, ransomware attacks and environmental impact, not its theoretical centralized government-issued digital ledger counterpart. CBDCs, or in the American context a ‘digital dollar’, are tokens issued by a central bank on a digital ledger — a centralized computer network that’s similar, but not the same, as a private, permissioned blockchain. ... (full story)