Digital Money:

A two-part leadership roundtable chaired throughout by Cynyoung Park. Part 1 (this session) will examine digital money and the future monetary architecture. Following a 30-minute lunch break, Part 2 will reconvene from 12:30 to 13:45 to examine sovereignty, strategic technology dependence and institutional agency.

The two parts are deliberately connected, but Part 2 is broader in scope. Part 1 uses digital money as a concrete and immediate example of how mandate-critical functions, infrastructure, data and responsibilities are becoming distributed across private actors and jurisdictions. Part 2 widens the lens to the full range of external dependencies and strategic pressures that can constrain a financial authority’s agency — including the risk that critical capabilities are denied, sensitive information is exposed, analytical inputs are distorted or dependencies are used as leverage. Digital money is therefore one important manifestation of the wider sovereignty challenge, not its boundary. The combined conversation moves from the design and governability of a changing monetary architecture to the more fundamental question of how financial authorities preserve both their ability to execute decisions and the integrity of the judgement behind them under disruption, geopolitical pressure or deliberate external threat.

Key Design Choices

1. Define the role and perimeter: determine which forms of digital money should serve retail, wholesale and cross-border use cases; which currencies, users and activities are permitted; and how foreign arrangements are recognised.

2. Design the claim and issuer regime: clarify the legal nature of the claim, eligible issuers, reserve, capital and liquidity requirements, redemption at par, safeguarding and treatment in insolvency.

3. Preserve the public monetary anchor: determine access to central-bank settlement, the role of CBDC or tokenised central-bank money, and interoperability and finality requirements that preserve the singleness of money across ledgers and payment rails.

4. Govern distribution, data and integrity: set rules for wallets, identity, consumer protection, privacy, financial-crime controls, operational resilience, custody and critical providers.

5. Manage system effects and stress: assess bank funding, transmission, currency substitution and capital flows, and establish liquidity, resolution, payment-continuity and cross-border crisis arrangements.

Guiding Questions

• What target monetary architecture should authorities aim for, and which outcomes should determine the role of each form of digital money?
• How should central-bank money, tokenised deposits and stablecoins interact to preserve singleness, competition and innovation?
• Which issuer, reserve, redemption, settlement and interoperability requirements are non-negotiable, and where can models differ?
• How should supervision, financial integrity, data governance and crisis management work across wallets, providers and borders?
• What are the implications for bank funding, transmission, digital dollarisation and capital flows, and what must be decided in the next 12–24 months?