The Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker is a public dashboard maintained by the Atlantic Council's GeoEconomics Center that monitors the development of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) across the world's economies. Launched in 2020 and updated periodically since, it classifies each jurisdiction's CBDC efforts into stages such as researching, developing, piloting, launched, inactive, or cancelled, and distinguishes between retail and wholesale designs as well as cross-border projects.
The tracker covers the central banks of countries representing the bulk of global GDP. Among the most-cited data points it surfaces are the Bahamas' Sand Dollar (launched October 2020), Nigeria's eNaira (launched October 2021), Jamaica's JAM-DEX, and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank's DCash, alongside large-scale pilots such as China's e-CNY and the European Central Bank's digital euro preparation phase. It also catalogues multi-CBDC and cross-border experiments including Project mBridge, Project Dunbar, Project Icebreaker, and Project Agorá.
Each country page typically lists the issuing central bank, project name, technology partners where disclosed, design choices (account- vs. token-based, intermediated vs. direct), and links to primary-source publications from the relevant monetary authority. The tracker is widely cited by the IMF, BIS, financial press (Reuters, FT, Bloomberg), and academic researchers as a baseline reference for the global state of CBDC work, in part because no comparable consolidated public dataset exists.
For Model UN delegates and IR researchers, the tracker is useful in committees dealing with international monetary policy, financial inclusion, sanctions evasion, and the future of the dollar-based system. It is descriptive rather than normative: it does not endorse CBDCs or rank them, and its categories rely on public announcements, meaning early-stage research projects may be under- or over-represented depending on central bank transparency. Users should cross-check stage labels against the originating central bank's own statements, since classifications can lag policy reversals — as occurred when several pilot projects were quietly paused.
Example
In 2023, analysts citing the Atlantic Council CBDC Tracker noted that over 100 countries were exploring a CBDC, with the Bahamas, Nigeria, and Jamaica having launched live retail systems.