Only 4% of Norway uses cash as country evaluates CBDC, Norges Bank exec says
Cash usage has declined in Norway since COVID-19, but physical currency also carries strengths that CBDCs may lack. Speaking at an event on Thursday, Ida Wolden Bache, deputy governor at Norway's central bank, described a decline in cash payments while elaborating on Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs. "Only 4% of payments are now made using cash," Bache said in her speech during Finance Norway's Payments conference. "This share is approximately the same as in spring, and considerably lower than before the pandemic," she added. "To our knowledge, the share of cash payments is lower....
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The Norwegian central bank aims to find a preferred CBDC solution through new technical tests. The Norwegian central bank, Norges Bank, is set to test various technical solutions for a central bank digital currency following years of research.Norges Bank officially announced Friday that it will be conducting CBDC tests over the next two years upon recommendations from an internal working group. “The working group is of the opinion that the motivation for research into CBDCs has been strengthened. Many central banks are in the process of carrying out similar research, and several are....
Norway’s largest bank DNB proposes to stop using cash as a means of payment in the country. According to the DNB bank’s executive Trond Bentestuen, more that half of all cash transfers in the country are made without the banks’ control, and so could be used for illegal purposes. He commented to local news media outlet VG.no: “Today, there is approximately 50 billion kroner in circulation and [the country’s central bank] Norges Bank can only account for 40 percent of its use. That means that 60 percent of money usage is outside of any control. We believe that is due to under-the-table money....
The prototype infrastructure for Norway’s central bank digital currency is based on Ethereum, the Norges Bank officially stated. The central bank of Norway has hit a major milestone in digital currency efforts, releasing the open source code for the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) sandbox.Available on GitHub, the sandbox is designed to offer an interface for interacting with the test network, enabling functions like minting, burning and transferring ERC-20 tokens, the Norges Bank’s official CBDC partner Nahmii said in a blog post.Nahmii stressed that the current version of....
Norway is now planning to withdraw NOK 121 bln (close to $15 bln) from its sovereign wealth fund in order to cover its loss of oil revenue. The idea that Norway’s sovereign wealth fund could put cryptocurrency in its portfolio now sounds wild, but in reality it could happen soon. The country is the biggest oil exporter in western Europe and with crude oil prices down, it has hurt the Norwegian economy and if oil prices do not rise. The fund itself is approximately $890 bln. The fund keeps the money in the Norges Bank. By third quarter 2016, the government already withdrew a total of NOK 54....
The deputy governor of the Norges Bank said there's no urgent need for the nation to launch a digital krone in a speech Thursday.