For the past few years, the Bank for International Settlements has released a poll every August that governments generally refrain from addressing in public and central banks carefully scrutinize. August 22, 2025 saw the release of the 2024 edition, which was subtly titled “Advancing in tandem — results of the 2024 BIS survey on central bank digital currencies and crypto.
” It ran to just over fifty pages, contained minimal rhetorical flourish, and confirmed what most people working in monetary policy already suspected but that very few elected officials have been willing to explain clearly to their constituents: 91% of the world’s central banks are actively developing digital versions of their national currencies, and the questions the technology raises about privacy, bank disintermediation, and state monetary power have not been settled.
| Category | Detail |
|---|---|
| The Report | BIS Papers No 159: “Advancing in tandem” — annual Bank for International Settlements survey of central bank digital currency and crypto activity; published August 22, 2025; the most authoritative industry snapshot available on CBDC development globally |
| Survey Scope | 93 central banks surveyed in 2024; 85 of them (91%) actively exploring retail CBDC, wholesale CBDC, or both; represents most of the world’s monetary authorities by population and economic weight |
| Wholesale vs. Retail | Wholesale CBDC exploration (interbank settlement assets) is at more advanced stages than retail; likelihood of wholesale CBDC issuance within six years now exceeds likelihood of retail CBDC issuance in most jurisdictions |
| Stablecoin-Driven Acceleration | Over a third of central banks have intensified CBDC work in response to stablecoin growth; 43% of central banks stepped up wholesale CBDC work by late 2024 due to private digital currencies |
| US Genius Act Context | The US stablecoin legislation (Genius Act, signed July 18, 2025) was passed after the BIS survey was conducted; the European Central Bank has repeatedly cited US stablecoin policy as accelerating digital euro urgency |
| Retail CBDC Design Features | More than half of central banks considering: holding limits, interoperability, offline options, and zero remuneration; significant divergence between advanced and emerging market jurisdictions on distributed ledger and transaction limits |
| Current Adoption Reality | Despite the research activity, real-world adoption remains minimal: Jamaica’s JAM-DEX at 0.1% of money in circulation; China’s e-yuan at 0.16% of M0; Bahamas Sand Dollar at 0.5% of banknote circulation |
| Stablecoin Regulation | Approximately two-thirds of responding jurisdictions have or are developing frameworks to regulate stablecoins and other cryptoassets |
The report is intriguing as a document because of the disparity between the amount of official research and the lack of political discourse. Eighty-five of the ninety-three central banks polled are investigating CBDC in some capacity, either wholesale (digital settlement assets used between banks) or retail (digital money held directly by citizens). Compared to the retail version, the wholesale effort is more advanced and has a higher chance of producing a live system within six years in the majority of jurisdictions.
The EU, Switzerland, and a number of Asian economies’ central banks have transitioned from the exploratory to pilot phases. The US stablecoin policies, such as the Genius Act, which was passed into law on July 18, 2025, have been frequently referenced by the European Central Bank in particular as the reason the digital euro timetable has shortened. These movements aren’t theoretical. They are operational plans.
For the most part, the governments affiliated with these central banks have not explained to the public what a CBDC would actually entail. The causes are not particularly enigmatic. Depending on how it is built, a retail CBDC gives the government the technical power to monitor every transaction a citizen makes, set money expiration dates, impose spending limits, and distribute monetary policy without using commercial banks.
In certain policy settings, each of those skills can be justified, but in others, they are quite uncomfortable. According to the BIS report, over half of central banks thinking about retail CBDCs are incorporating holding restrictions, offline possibilities, and zero compensation—design decisions made expressly to keep the digital currency from replacing cash or upsetting the commercial banking industry. These are important limitations. They are also constraints that could be changed, later, without much public visibility.
The stablecoin pressure is the other half of the story. The BIS survey found that about a third of central banks had intensified CBDC work in response to growth in private stablecoins — dollar-denominated tokens like Tether and USDC that circulate outside the traditional banking system. The concern among monetary authorities is not theoretical.
A well-established dollar stablecoin operating freely in an emerging market economy creates a parallel monetary system that the local central bank cannot easily regulate. The BIS data confirms that stablecoin use for actual payments outside the crypto ecosystem remains limited — but the direction of travel is the variable that policymakers are reacting to, not the current state.
There’s a feeling, reading the report carefully, that the central banks of the world are preparing for a monetary transition they are not yet willing to describe to their citizens in plain terms. It makes sense that there would be political unease.
Any honest public conversation about CBDCs requires acknowledging that the current monetary system involves private banks, physical cash, and a degree of transactional privacy that a retail CBDC would not automatically preserve. Governments do not appear eager to have that conversation. The BIS report sits on desks in finance ministries and central banks around the world, and the public discussion of what it contains is almost entirely absent. That absence is, arguably, the most revealing fact about the current moment in monetary policy.