Japan Releasing the Digital Yen, An in-depth look

After reading recent news about Japan beginning work on a digital Yen, i decided to research deeper.

the bank of Japan had information back from 2017 talking about crypto technology, called project Stella. Stella was a collaboration from the central European bank, and the bank of Japan to study the use of ledgers in currencies. In the end Stella worked, but they had issues with scaling Stella.

By 2019 phase 3 of Stella had begun. Which focused on international transactions, Phase 3 includes some oddly similar technologies to a smart contract, although Stella at this time was more focused on the movement of a digital euro and a digital Yen. They were able to lessen a lot of risk when transferring digital currencies in this phase.

March 26th a committee to build the digital Yen was formed. In the first meeting of this committee, they out right say "While there is no change in the Bank's stance that it "currently has no plan to issue CBDC," we believe that initiating experiments at this stage is a necessary step". Giving an obvious insight that the central banks, despite all their investments so far, are not ready to put more money into a CBDC. The first meeting gives an argument of why a digital Yen should be made.

April 5th, Phase one starts. They are issuing the digital Yen in small experiments that will last till March 2022.

June 9th is the latest update I can find, giving a bare bones regulation of the CBDC, and a way to standardize the digital Yen.

Since 2016 Crypto had been noticed by the central banks in Japan, which is a contrast to much of the world in many cases. Japan is using technology from Stella it seems to possibly make the digital Yen more secure and standardized. It will be interesting where the digital Yen is in a year after Phase 1 is completed.

Tldr: Japan began researching crypto technology in 2016. March of 2021 they made a committee to work on the digital Yen. April 5th they begin phase 1 of the digital Yen, with small distributions upon the Japanese banks and the government. June of 2021 gave a nice way of how the digital Yen will be standardized for everyday use, and how Stella, the research from 2016-2019, will be used in the digital Yen.