In July this year the European Central Bank officially launched its digital euro project, marking the end of the ‘examination phase’ and the beginning of an ambitious two-year ‘investigation phase’, with the potential to launch in five years’ time. This takes the ECB one step further than the 86% of central banks said to be researching central bank digital currencies. While this may sound superficially slow, there are multiple wicked problems to solve. Unlike the Federal Reserve, which remains sceptical that a digital dollar would solve any major problem confronting the US payments system, the ECB’s key motivations ... (full story)