The Central Bank of Brazil Plans to Use CBDC Data to Guide National Interest Rate Benchmark Decisions
The Central Bank of Brazil is planning to utilize transaction data from its Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) infrastructure, Drex, to guide the setting of the national interest rate benchmark.
On June 4, Central Bank President Henrique Videira stated at the Token Nation conference in São Paulo that every payment and asset transfer recorded on the Drex distributed ledger will generate a structured entry with a timestamp.
By aggregating these entries, the monetary authority hopes to measure changes in consumption, liquidity conditions, and industry performance in near real-time, inputting these indicators into existing models before each monetary policy committee meeting.
Videira also emphasized that Drex only stores hashed personal identifiers to prevent individual tracking and ensure privacy protection. This plan expands the Central Bank of Brazil's strategy of using on-chain evidence to supplement investigations and banking system indicators.
He outlined a workflow where anonymous Drex data is merged with wholesale settlement flows on the same ledger through internal filters and appears on policy dashboards to track merchant category spending, collateral changes, and regional trade volumes.
This approach is also seen as an upgrade of analytical methods rather than transferring decision-making power to algorithms. Videira stated that for borrowers with limited banking credit histories, loan institutions could be authorized to review their Drex cash flow records to provide verifiable proof of income without the need to submit pay stubs.
The Central Bank of Brazil encourages institutions to build an analytical layer in Drex, labeling ledger fields for AI pattern recognition and allowing agricultural and public health agencies to use anonymous datasets to simulate disease spread to improve crop yields.
It is reported that the Drex pilot project entered a limited production phase in March, with 16 institutions testing tokenized public debt and deposit tokens.
In summary, the Central Bank of Brazil plans to use CBDC data to guide national interest rate benchmark decisions, enhancing the timeliness and accuracy of decision-making and potentially boosting financial inclusion, providing fairer and more efficient financial services to all social strata.
Do you think this innovative move by the Central Bank of Brazil can provide a model worth emulating for other countries? Leave a comment and discuss in the comment section!