This article in this week’s issue of The Economist is a decent overview of central bank digital currencies, or governments issuing their own cryptocurrency.
According to the article, the main difference between these and the cashless payment systems we already use is “money held on a CBDC app or website will be equivalent to a deposit at the central bank”. Similarly, the article predicts, money held in private payment/wallet apps will still be equivalent to being held at the bank, not on the payment providers’ balance sheet.
I was disappointed that the article made only one passing reference to the programmable nature of digital currency, something that is widely done in crypto projects today’s using “smart contracts”, often the most innovative part of such projects. Back in September 2020, I had explored this topic myself in more detail: