Atlantic Council: The CBDC Tracker and Geopolitical Lens on Crypto Policy

Think tanks compete for attention in the same way that media outlets compete for readers: by being the first, most comprehensive, or most authoritative source on topics that others have not yet covered systematically. The Atlantic Council found its niche in CBDC coverage not by producing the most sophisticated theoretical analysis but by doing something that seems simple in retrospect: tracking every country’s CBDC development status in one publicly accessible database.

The CBDC Tracker, launched by the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, monitors the development status of central bank digital currencies in over 130 countries. It shows which countries are at the research stage, which have active pilots, which have launched retail CBDCs, and which have cancelled their programs. It is updated regularly as country status changes, cited by journalists from every major financial publication, referenced by Congressional staff briefing legislators on international CBDC competition, and used by central bank researchers comparing their country’s progress against peers.

No other institution had done this comprehensively. The Atlantic Council filled the gap, and in doing so, it shaped the discourse around CBDCs in ways that a traditional research paper never could.

The GeoEconomics Center and Josh Lipsky

The GeoEconomics Center, led by Josh Lipsky, is the Atlantic Council’s hub for international economic policy and digital finance. Lipsky came to the Atlantic Council after serving as a communications director at the IMF, bringing both substantive expertise and a network of relationships with international financial institution officials.

Lipsky’s distinctive contribution to CBDC analysis is the geopolitical frame. Most CBDC analysis focuses on technical design, financial stability implications, or consumer experience. Lipsky’s work asks different questions: What does China’s digital yuan mean for the dollar’s international role? Can the US maintain financial sanction effectiveness as alternative settlement infrastructure develops? Is the competition in CBDC development a form of geopolitical competition that the US is at risk of losing?

These questions resonate in Washington in ways that technical CBDC design questions do not. Foreign policy officials, intelligence community members, and Congressional national security staffers are not primarily interested in whether atomic settlement improves capital efficiency. They are interested in whether China is building infrastructure that could allow countries to conduct international trade without touching the dollar payment system. The Atlantic Council’s framing of CBDC as a national security question brings a different institutional audience into crypto policy discussions.

Dollar Hegemony and the Digital Currency Threat

The Atlantic Council has produced extensive analysis of the relationship between CBDC development and dollar dominance. The dollar’s role as the world’s primary reserve currency and the currency in which most international trade is denominated gives the United States significant policy leverage — including the ability to impose financial sanctions through its control of the dollar payment system.

The Atlantic Council’s analysis identifies three mechanisms by which digital currencies could erode this leverage. First, multi-CBDC platforms like mBridge could allow international trade settlement to occur in currencies other than the dollar, bypassing the correspondent banking system that makes dollar dominance effective. Second, the digital yuan (e-CNY), if widely adopted in China’s trading partner countries, could establish yuan-denominated payment infrastructure that creates an alternative to dollar rails. Third, the proliferation of dollar-pegged stablecoins — which depend on dollar infrastructure but are not necessarily subject to US regulatory oversight — creates ambiguity about how sanctions apply to dollar-value transfers that don’t touch US correspondent banks.

The Atlantic Council’s recommendation — that the US engage actively with CBDC development and international payment infrastructure rather than ceding the field — is a minority view in some Washington circles where CBDCs are viewed primarily as surveillance instruments. The Council’s geopolitical framing argues that the cost of inaction is higher than the risks of engagement, and that the real surveillance risk comes from allowing adversary nations to define the infrastructure architecture while the US remains on the sidelines.

Sanctions Policy and Crypto

The Atlantic Council’s work on sanctions and crypto has addressed both the enforcement challenges that crypto creates for existing sanctions regimes and the longer-term structural risks from alternative payment infrastructure. The Russia sanctions experience — following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine — provided a significant empirical test case. Russia’s attempts to use crypto to circumvent sanctions, and the subsequent work by crypto exchanges to implement sanctions screening, generated evidence about both the limitations and the capabilities of sanctions enforcement in a crypto environment.

The Atlantic Council’s analysis of the Russia case concluded that crypto was not a sanctions silver bullet for Russia — volumes were insufficient for major commodity trade settlement, and major exchanges implemented sanctions screening — but that the development of wholesale CBDC infrastructure over time could change this calculus. The warning is prospective: the current system can manage crypto sanctions evasion, but the system being built — particularly by nations with explicit interest in avoiding dollar-based sanctions — may be harder to manage.

Convening Power and Information Dissemination

Beyond the CBDC Tracker and published research, the Atlantic Council’s influence operates through its convening capacity. Regular events bring together Treasury officials, Federal Reserve staff, European central bank representatives, and private sector experts in formats that allow substantive exchange. These events generate content — published proceedings, video, analysis — that extends the Council’s reach beyond its immediate attendees.

The Council’s transatlantic mission also gives it natural convening authority on US-EU crypto policy coordination questions. As European MiCA implementation proceeds and the US develops its own digital asset legislation, the divergences and convergences between the two regulatory regimes have significant implications for global crypto markets. The Atlantic Council is well-positioned to facilitate the policy dialogue between these two regulatory communities that these questions require.