Lithuania is about to issue the first central bank-produced digital coin in the euro zone. It’s part of a project to trial state-backed digital currencies and blockchain technology in everyday use. Think of a physical representation of bitcoin-style virtual money. The sharp decline in the use of cash and the prospect of Facebook’s 2.5 billion users adopting the Libra cryptocurrency has led central banks to examine how they can issue their own forms of digital currency.

Twenty-four thousand digital tokens dubbed LBCOINs and based on blockchain technology will go on pre-sale next week, each with an attached portrait of one of the 20 people who signed Lithuania’s declaration of independence in 1918. ‘No one in the central bank community was thinking about digital currency seriously before we realized that there is a legitimate threat that someone else will take our space,’ said Marius Jurgilas, deputy governor of Lithuania’s central bank.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the development of CBDCs as it has prompted millions of people to turn to cashless payments, central bank officials said in June. Central banks will introduce CBDCs carefully to avoid fragmenting the financial and monetary system, Benoit Coeure, head of the Innovation Hub at the Bank for International Settlements, said in June.

https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/03/lithuania-becomes-first-country-trial-state-backed-digital-currency-12940121/?ito=article.amp.share.top.twitter