The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), in collaboration with a group of seven central banks, published
its first joint report into central bank digital currencies on Oct. 9,
focusing on the foundational principles and core features of CBDCs.

Alongside the report, the Bank of Japan, one of the members of the group, released a document outlining its own specific approach to CBDCs from a Japan-centric perspective.

According
to the BoJ report, it will begin the first of several testing phases
for its own CBDC sometime in 2021. This will include the development of a
test environment for the currency and experiments on its basement
functions as a payment instrument.

The BoJ report notes that a
core feature of the digital currency must be resilience in the face of
infrastructure disrupted by forces Majeure, stating:

"Offline
use in times of system and network failures as well as electrical
outages is also important for Japan, given the frequent occurrence of
natural disasters."

Due to the nature of its geography,
Japan is prone to a wide range of natural disasters, including
earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, typhoons, cyclones and volcanic
eruptions.

The report gives no details on how providing against
such events might be achieved, although there are solutions that address
potential electrical or network failures for Bitcoin (BTC) and other blockchain-based cryptocurrencies.

These include the development of mesh networks based around long-wave radio transmitters, and Blockstream's satellite network, which broadcasts Bitcoin transactions via space.

The BIS digital currency research group was announced in January 2020,
and included central banks from Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom,
Sweden, Switzerland and the European Central Bank. The United Stated
Federal Reserve has also since joined the group.