CoinVoice recently learned that the Central Bank of Malaysia (BNM) has stated that it will focus on the research of wholesale Central Bank Digital Money (wCBDC) and will not consider the issuance of retail CBDC. The bank believes that the existing system is sufficient to meet the needs of retail payments.

BNM stated that wCBDC will be used for interbank settlement of tokenization deposits both domestically and internationally, and it has participated in Singapore's multi-CBDC project 'Project Dunbar' and cross-border CBDC project 'mBridge'. Despite ongoing technical preparations and policy research, BNM plans to continue researching wCBDC and Distributed Ledger technology in 2024-2025, but there are no immediate issuance plans.

Several Asian Central Banks, including those in Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, are also exploring wCBDC to support tokenization of deposits. According to a report by Ledger Insights, there are currently over 70 projects on tokenized deposits and bank stablecoin in progress. [Original Article Link]