Navigating Beijing’s digital cash ambitions By Huang Tien-lin 黃天麟 In the past few months, Taiwan’s print media seem to have become engulfed in a “digital currency fever” — almost every day there are reports about digital currencies saying that central banks in many countries are rushing to research and issue them. On Oct. 10 last year, the Chinese-language Economic Daily News reported that seven major national central banks, including the US Federal Reserve, had drafted principles for the issuance of central bank digital currencies (CBDC), in the hope of catching up with China. The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) in June last year reported that Taiwan’s central bank completed a study on “wholesale CBDC feasibility technology” for large interbank transactions.