The Bank of Canada has reportedly forged an alliance with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to collaborate on a CBDC initiative lasting for a year. 

Specifically, the bank will reportedly team up with the MIT Media Labs’ Digital Currency Initiative (DCI) division, to deep-dive into the way “advanced technologies could affect the potential design of a CBDC.”

The Bank of Canada additionally revealed that the initiative is included within the scope of a wider development agenda, focusing on digital currencies, fintech, as well as the way CBDCs could function in the Canadian scene. 

It reportedly issued a warning that “no decision has been made on whether to introduce a CBDC in Canada”, but claimed that it would offer an update as soon as the research initiative is finalized. 

The MIT DCI has reportedly teamed up with a different bank in the past. As earlier in February this year, it had published research on the topic via a partnership formed with The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

Going by the name “Project Hamilton”, the initiative reportedly sought to conduct testing for a “hypothetical general purpose CBDC”, via employing two potential models, including distributed ledger technology (DLT) and processing transactions in parallel across a variety of computers, instead of being dependent on a single ordering server to prevent double-spending.

CBDCs – as memorably referred to by Rich Checkan, Asset Strategies International president, as being “concocted in hell by Satan himself” and with Edward Snowden warning about the implications for privacy and freedom – have been the talk of the town recently.

As for America, the POTUS Joe Biden’s executive order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets provided details that his administration will apply “the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options” of U.S.-based CBDC.