Never let a crisis go to waste. Or a market crash for that matter.

With equity and bond markets stuck in brutal bear markets and providing a sufficient distraction to what is happening behind the scenes, the Fed and a group of banks have been quietly preparing for the next stage in the "organized crash" pipeline: the rollout of CBSC.

According to a statement by the New York Fed, global banking giants are starting a 12-week digital dollar pilot with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the participants announced on Tuesday.

Citigroup, HSBC Holdings, Mastercard and Wells Fargo are among the financial companies participating in the experiment alongside the New York Fed, which will provide a "public contribution to the body of knowledge on the application of new technology to the regulated financial system."

Bank of New York Mellon, the money-laundering bank of the world, HSBC Holdings, PNC Financial Services, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Truist Financial and U.S. Bancorp are also participating in the test, along with payments network Mastercard.

The project, which is called the "regulated liability network", will allow banks to simulate issuing digital money representing their customers' own funds before settling through central bank reserves on a distributed ledger, the New York Fed said.

The pilot will test how banks using digital dollar tokens in a common database can help speed up payments.

"Programmable US dollars may be necessary to support new business models and provide a foundation to much-needed innovations in financial settlements and infrastructure," Tony McLaughlin, managing director for emerging payments and business development at Citigroup's treasury and trade solutions division, said in a statement Tuesday. "Projects like this, that focus on the digitization of central bank money and individual bank deposits, could be expanded to take a broader view of the opportunity."