Consider the following statements with reference to

Solution

Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) digital rupee — the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) — may be introduced in phases beginning with wholesale businesses in the current financial year. In her Budget speech on February 1, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said that the central bank would launch the CBDC in the financial year 2022-23. According to the RBI, “CBDC is the legal tender issued by a central bank in a digital form. It is the same as a fiat currency and is exchangeable one-to-one with the fiat currency. Only its form is different”. The digital fiat currency or CBDC can be transacted using wallets backed by blockchain. Though the concept of CBDCs was directly inspired by Bitcoin, it is different from decentralised virtual currencies and crypto assets, which are not issued by the state and lack the ‘legal tender’ status.