The Premier says the island is preparing the ground for a digitally native Bermuda dollar, marking an evolution from its earlier stance of relying on privately-issued stablecoins for the blockchain initiative announced earlier this year.

Speaking at the DC Blockchain Summit today, David Burt, who is also Minister of Finance, recalled that Government initially ruled out issuing a central bank digital currency and chose to work through the private sector instead.

“We made a declaration a long time ago that Bermuda will not be essentially issued CBDC,” he said. “We intend[ed] on doing this from a private sector side, with stablecoins.”

Bermuda’s push towards an “onchain” economy builds on years of positioning itself as a digital asset hub, beginning with the introduction of the Digital Asset Business Act in 2018 and deepening through partnerships with firms such as Circle and Coinbase.

More recently, the Government has piloted stablecoin-based payments, including trials at the Bermuda Digital Finance Forum and plans to integrate tokenised payments across public services. However, the initiative has drawn concerns about consumer protection, reliance on private issuers and benefits beyond limited government use cases.

Critics have also pointed to liquidity pressures, outages and scams, even as Mr Burt and other officials say the roll-out will be voluntary and phased.

Officials at Bermuda Commercial Bank have said that the bank’s digital infrastructure showed that a fully compliant, lower‑cost stablecoin system for everyday payments in Bermuda was technically feasible.

Mr Burt, who announced the blockchain plan at Davos this year, said that view has shifted as the island’s pilots with stablecoins have progressed and policymakers have gained more experience.

“We're continuing to discuss what a digitally native version of our currency can look like,” he said.

He framed the issue partly as one of monetary identity in a dollarised economy, and partly as a way to improve basic government services. A Bermudian digital dollar, he said, would be “complementary” and “local in and of itself” and should have “the least amount of friction in citizen-to-government transactions.”

According to Mr Burt, the Bermuda Monetary Authority and the Ministry of Finance are now aligned on a legislative road map for such a currency and are moving into a phase of selecting technology partners.

He said the next step is “evaluating the right infrastructure partners and frameworks that will actually allow us to support a digitally-native Bermuda dollar in the future,” he said.

Mr Burt also indicated that the future design may diverge from the current pilot model based on privately issued stablecoins. While those tokens are still being tested, he said they are exploring how they “can be used and accepted as legal tender” but added that a future digital Bermuda dollar “may not be privately issued stable coins”.