The Bank of England has called on ministers to decide whether a central bank digital currency should be “programmable”, ultimately giving the issuer control over how it is spent by the recipient.
Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said during a conference on Monday that programming could become a key feature of any future central bank digital currency, in which the money would be programmed to be released only when something happened. “There could be some socially beneficial outcomes from that, preventing activity which is seen to be socially harmful in some way…”
“One potential use could be control over benefits payments”
“You could think of giving your children pocket money, but programming the money so that it couldn’t be used for sweets. There is a whole range of things that money could do, programmable money, which we cannot do with the current technology.”
Tess