Riksbank, the Swedish central bank, has recently released the most comprehensive review of digital currency by any public body to date. This follows the nation’s testing of ‘e-krona’ — the state’s official digital currency, or ‘central bank digital currency’ (CBDC).

The reviews cover the rationale for adopting CBDC, it’s effectiveness as an official currency, it’s competitiveness both today and in the future, overall pros and cons, et al.

Despite the nomenclature, e-krona isn’t comparable to Swedish krona (SEK) in terms of value, with 1 e-krona worth around 3x that of SEK at the time of writing.

With other nations such as the UK, China, India, and Canada, poised to delve into e-currency experimentation, these findings may prove invaluable from both an efficacy and security perspective, more so with fraud concerns being one of the primary points of interest in the report:

“An open DLT network is associated with several disadvantages; every transaction must be verified by every participant (cf. blockchain) in a time and resource-consuming manner. The responsibility for the Riksbank regarding AML, KYC & CTF could be indefinite. Fraud and cyber-attacks are hard to prevent in an open network.

With blockchain-based currency and its analogues likely becoming a requirement for the development and sustainability of any major country’s economy, centralised government banks are being railroaded into finding a solution.

CBDCs are on the horizon, and they’ll be here to stay.