Japan will address the legality of CBDC issuance in the third quarter of 2024

ChainCatcher News, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) held its first official meeting with the government to discuss Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). According to local television channel NHK on January 26, the government and the Bank of Japan agreed to resolve legal issues related to the issuance of digital yen by spring 2024.

Neither the Bank of Japan nor the government has formally confirmed the launch of digital yen, and any decision will be made after a "national discussion" at the earliest in 2026.

It is reported that in December 2023, the Bank of Japan reviewed a report from a Treasury expert group recommending the "immediate" issuance of digital yen. The experts concluded that the Japanese CBDC should coexist with cash, and the Bank of Japan must limit the potential storage of personal data to a minimum. The Bank of Japan concluded the second phase of its CBDC testing in May 2023. This test ran for a year, involving 100,000 users and 5 intermediary institutions, with a load of 500 transactions per second and 3,000 transactions per second. The experiment was declared successful, and the Bank of Japan continues its scheduled CBDC pilot project, which aims to examine the "end-to-end process" and further connections with external systems.