The move towards central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) “is gaining momentum, driven by the ingenuity of Central Banks.”
As a barrage of Western sanctions visit all manner of pain upon Russia’s economy, attention is turning in some quarters to potential ways of circumventing U.S. economic sanctions in the future. One potential weapon for defanging future sanctions is central bank digital currency (CBDC) networks, according to Lewis McLellan, the digital editor of the Digital Monetary Institute of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF):
Cross-border central bank digital currency networks are in development across Asia (like the mCBDC Bridge, which involves Thailand, Hong Kong, China and the United Arab Emirates). Russia’s central bank is working on a digital rouble and Governor Elvira Nabiullina has expressed interest in its value as a means of facilitating cross-border payments, particularly with China.
The digital yuan could also be pressed into service. It is widely usable within China and is likely to be accepted by anyone with costs or liabilities in China. Even dollar stablecoins, which are growing in scale and importance, could help form the backbone of a payments network that cannot be curtailed by revoking access to Swift or the Fed’s clearing system. There is no evidence that China intends to help Russian businesses circumvent sanctions — they are likely to face their own sanctions if they do — but if the dollar payments network is becoming a tool of foreign policy, it adds a new sense of urgency for some to develop an alternative.
Beijing Expands Public Testing of Digital Yuan
The digital renminbi is the first CBDC to be issued by the central bank of a major economy and has been undergoing public testing since April 2021. China’s testing of CBDCs has so far taken place in ten cities and regions (Shenzhen, Suzhou, Chengdu, Xiong’an, Shanghai, Hainan, Changsha, Xi’an, Qingdao and Dalian). According to Chinese state-backed financial media outlet Securities Times, Beijing is on the verge of launching trials of its digital yuan currency in a third batch of localities, which could include Henan, Fujian and Heilongjiang provinces, and the cities of Guangzhou, Chongqing, Fuzhou and Xiamen.
China’s central bank has been exploring the possibilities offered by digital currencies since 2014. Those possibilities include reduced operating costs, increased efficiency and “a wide range of new applications,” said Fan Yifei, a deputy governor of the PBOC, in 2016. A year later, the State Council of the People’s Republic of China gave its blessing to the development of the digital RMB. Commercial banks were invited to participate in the project, as too were Chinese tech giants Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, JD.com and UnionPay.
The digital renminbi has since been flagged as a “national security issue” threatening the U.S. dollar by Josh Lipsky, a former IMF staffer who is now at the Atlantic Council, an influential U.S. think tank. Yet the People’s Bank of China is hardly what you would call an outlier when it comes to experimenting with or piloting a digital upgrade of its national currency.
In total, 87 central banks in economies representing 90% of global GDP are currently at it, including the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the Bank of England. The Reserve Bank of India recently announced that it will introduce a digital rupee in the coming financial year (April 2022 to March 2023). Three CBDCs have actually gone fully live in the past two years: the so-called DCash in the Eastern Caribbean, the Sand Dollar in the Bahamas and the eNaira in Nigeria, whose impact so far has been pretty underwhelming, as the technology news website Tech Monitor reports:
Almost as soon as it was launched, users complained of poor functionality and the app was briefly withdrawn from the Google Play Store for improvements. By January, only 694,000 eNaira wallets had been downloaded (the e-Yuan, by contrast, remains in its pilot stage but boasts some 260 million users). Spending also remained low, with $450,000 worth of transactions recorded.
IMF Firmly on Board
As one might expect, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the world’s most important supranational financial institution, is deeply involved in this process, including by providing technical assistance to many of its members. Speaking at an event organized by the Atlantic Council last month, the IMF’s President Kristalina Georgieva outlined the potential benefits of CBDCs while heaping praise on the “ingenuity” of central banks:
We have moved beyond conceptual discussions of CBDCs and we are now in the phase of experimentation. Central banks are rolling up their sleeves and familiarizing themselves with the bits and bytes of digital money.
These are still early days for CBDCs and we don’t quite know how far and how fast they will go. What we know is that central banks are building capacity to harness new technologies—to be ready for what may lie ahead.
If CBDCs are designed prudently, they can potentially offer more resilience, more safety, greater availability, and lower costs than private forms of digital money. That is clearly the case when compared to unbacked crypto assets that are inherently volatile. And even the better managed and regulated stablecoins may not be quite a match against a stable and well‑designed central bank digital currency.
We know that the move towards CBDCs is gaining momentum, driven by the ingenuity of Central Banks.
All told, around 100 countries are exploring CBDCs at one level or another. Some researching, some testing, and a few already distributing CBDC to the public.
In the Bahamas, the Sand Dollar—the local CBDC—has been in circulation for more than a year.
Sweden’s Riksbank has developed a proof of concept and is exploring the technology and policy implications of CBDC.
In China, the digital renminbi [called e-CNY,] continues to progress with more than a hundred million individual users and billions of yuan in transactions.
And, just last month, the Federal Reserve issued a report that noted that “a CBDC could fundamentally change the structure of the U.S. financial system.”[i]
As you might expect, the IMF is deeply involved in this issue, including through providing technical assistance to many members. An important role for the Fund is to promote exchange of experience and support the interoperability of CBDCs.
A Digital Peso?
Even countries where cash is still the undisputed king of the payments landscape are frantically trying to roll out a CBDC. Three days ago, El País published an article (in Spanish) titled “Is Mexico Ready for a Central Bank Digital Currency?” The article begins by looking at recent moves by Mexico’s central bank, Banco de Mexico (Banxico), to explore the possibility of rolling out a digital peso, which Banxico believes could be ready as early as 2024:
Othón Moreno, director of policy and studies of payment systems and market infrastructure of the central bank, recently said in a seminar on cryptocurrencies that there is a demand for stable currencies (known as stablecoins), and that several central banks are currently analyzing the issuance process. “Central banks have historically successfully issued their legal tender currencies. We have limited ourselves to doing it physically, but I think it shows that the technology is there, and that the demand is there to be able to issue the same functionalities of legal tender, in a digital version”, he mentioned.
Obviously most Mexicans are not even aware that Banxico is exploring the possibility of launching a CBDC, or even what a CBDC is, let alone how it may impact their lives, so just how Moreno can claim that the “demand is there” for a digital peso is hard to fathom. It is even harder to fathom when you consider that 86% of Mexicans still use cash while just 4% use mobile payment platforms or the country’s interbank electronic payments system (SPEI).
Zero Public Debate
As with the vaccine passports and digital identity programs that have been or are being rolled out by governments across the world, there is virtually no attempt made to even inform let alone consult the general public on the matter. One of the few attempts was a POLITICO survey of 2,500 Brits conducted in 2021, which found that “British people harbor more suspicion about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) than excitement”:
The poll found only 24 percent of those surveyed believed the digital pound would bring more benefits than harm — 30 percent said the opposite. The rest couldn’t decide one way or the other.
Concerns among the U.K. public vary. The threat of cyberattacks and hackers left 73 percent of poll participants reluctant to hold Britcoins. The prospect of losing payment privacy worried 70 percent, while 45 percent were mindful of Britcoin’s potential environmental impact — a debate that enveloped other cryptocurrencies.
Fear of government power was also widespread, with 62 percent saying they feared the idea of public authorities being able to seize Britcoins from their digital wallets.
The benefits CBDCs offer central banks are likely to be significant, including far greater control over the money supply as well as the possibility of going much deeper into negative interest rate territory. The benefits for the general public are a lot less clear while the risks, including loss of anonymity and privacy, are potentially huge. The ability to track and trace spending in real time is one of the major attractions (for central banks) of having CBDCs, as Agustín Carstens, the president of the Bank of International Settlements, the central bank of central banks, and former chairman of Banco de Mexico, said in a recent interview:
“We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank digital liability, and also we will have technology to enforce that.”
One way central banks could use its expanded powers is to exert control over people’s spending habits, as Etienne Luquet, a Mexican lawyer specialized in cryptocurrency, tells El País. “Imagine that central banks would become a kind of all-powerful Financial Intelligence Unit that can audit or block accounts, or ensure that money can only be spent on certain items.”
This is not beyond the realms of possibility. In June 2021, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Bank of England had asked Government ministers to decide whether a central bank digital currency should be “programmable”:
Tom Mutton, a director at the Bank of England, said during a conference on Monday that programming could become a key feature of any future central bank digital currency, in which the money would be programmed to be released only when something happened.
He said: “You could introduce programmability – what happens if one of the participants in a transaction puts a restriction on [future use of the money]?
“There could be some socially beneficial outcomes from that, preventing activity which is seen to be socially harmful in some way. But at the same time it could be a restriction on people’s freedoms.”
He warned that the Government would be required to intervene and make the final decision.
Another huge possible consequence of CBDCs, whether intended or not, is the disintermediation of commercial banks, which will suddenly face unfair competition from their senior market regulator, which has unlimited ability to create money. According to Luquet, commercial banks could disappear altogether (though one can imagine certain well-placed institutions finding a new role in the emerging paradigm). This is an issue NC contributor Clive discusses in greater detail in his 2019 piece, “Mark Carney’s Trojan Unicorn — Are Central Banks Considering Stealth Nationalization in Sovereign Digital Currencies?”
In a speech at the China Europe Finance Summit, in Octobe 2020, Burkhard Balz, a member of the Executive Board of the Deutsche Bundesbank, posited: “What if, in times of crisis, bank deposits were rapidly withdrawn and converted into a digital euro? We call this scenario a ‘digital bank run.’ The result could be the destabilisation of the entire financial system.”
Another major risk posed by CBDCs is they could grant central banks the power to deprive people exhibiting the wrong sorts of views or behavior of the ability to transact altogether. It would be similar to what happened in the Trudeau government’s recent money heist in Canada, just a lot less visible and messy. This, of course, would only be possible if governments and central banks completely eliminated physical cash once the CBDCs were fully established — something many central banks swear they won’t do. But central banks are not exactly known for keeping their word.
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This is absurd. Digital currencies will only make it easier to sanction anyone of interest.
Ummm. That’s sort of the idea they’re going for.
Yes, sanctions and surveillance will be easier.
But the real purpose is to eliminate insured savings and checking accounts.
Another wet dream is to make it near impossible for those not born into wealth to create any kind of maintain their own safety net. Nothing is going to keep fools treading faster than ever on the hampster wheel than crypto.
But then this is the new crazy where moving data from one location to a bigger location (and renaming the new location “cloud”) is considered revolutionary.
News ways of collecting data to sell to advertisers and different versions of middleman payment systems “fintech”.
It’s laughable with all the awe like talk about “disruption”.
“Disruption” is mostly another word for “deregulation”.
it is time.
isn’t it time?
for the Butlerian Jihad?
That depends on who controls the digital currency.
https://asiatimes.com/2022/02/china-takes-money-into-21st-century/
Parts of the world may be ready, but the answer is a resounding “no” in the U.S. The response to any attempt to impose a digital currency in the U.S. would make the vaccination controversy seem like child’s play.
Perhaps there is an argument, that this is one very direct way to get post-office banking… that would be a hell of a coup. For those with the tinfoil hats concerned about surveillance… who, if not gov?
You’re probably right, but then there is little reason for the US to free itself from the USD. But given the global misrule of the USD (thinking Super Imperialism) and also of the debt-issuing private banking sector, then CBDC is looking like a very interesting idea.
If we want to do something about climate change then I do not see an alternative to big government with big banking. Kim Stanley Robinson wrote a novel Ministry Of The Future about this kind of scenario. The scenario from Don’t Look Up is way more likely, though.
Thanks for this post. A CBDC isn’t just another boring efficiency idea with no noticeable affect on currency users.
This line gave me a wry smile:
This is not beyond the realms of possibility. In June 2021, the Daily Telegraph reported that the Bank of England had asked Government ministers to decide whether a central bank digital currency should be “programmable”:
These days, asking the UK (and US) govt if it should have even more power and control over its citizens is like asking a child if he’d like a cookie, imo.
A CBDC is not money you will own in the way you own the dollar bill or bank note in your pocket, or the money in your bank account. What’s the phrase? “You will own nothing…”?
‘The benefits for central banks are likely to be significant, including far greater control over the money supply as well as the possibility of going much deeper into negative interest rate territory.’
Yeah, I’m gunna flag that straight away. What can this mean? So suppose the big banks once more drive the whole economic system into a ditch like they did in (pick your own choice of year). The government is told by the banks that to stop a recession, that they have to force people to spend their savings on goods and services. After the 2008 crash, UK officials had a good laugh at a press conference by saying that they had basically zeroed out interest rates to force people to spend their savings. But with digital cash, all they have to do is turn a dial to have the same effect. That $100 that you had in the digital bank? It is now only worth $90 now and is getting lower. Better spend it while there is still value left. Personal reserves? What is that? Won’t be possible now. And better hope that you do not live in an area that has blackouts or internet disruptions.
Just speculating here: what happens to all the cash dollar notes held by people outside the US as their “next to gold” financial security blanket? Keeping the dollar as a world reserve currency (wrc) is important to the US economy and world position. A CBDC would be another knock on the dollar as wrc. ( I know small cash holders around the world don’t set the wrc, but it encourages a certain acceptance and mindset, imo. And then, is the US going to “airlift” pallets of trackable “digital currency credits” into 3rd world countries to buy off gang leaders who use part of it to buy off followers? /heh.)
Maybe they will make physical notes non-redeemable in the US itself and keep on using “bricks” of dollars overseas. Of course that brings up the question of will there will be a 1 for 1 rate on digital US dollars in the US with physical US dollars overseas. Over time I do not think that that would be possible to keep up though.
The foreign held US physical dollar traded as Green Stamps ? Yeah, that’ll work. / ;)
Instead of a 1 for 1 rate on US DC with US dollars overseas there would need to be an updated exchange protocol not based on the “value” of the (domestic paper) currency, which in turn is based on how taxable and extractable and hapless that population is, but on a globalized inventory of assets and values, imo. That’s the only way it could work, no? And I’m thinking it doesn’t sound bad at all, but it will take a while. And there will always be a fall-back in any community to local currency because local governments can tax people locally. As far as “programmable” goes – that is a double-edged sword because it can prevent a lot of bad stuff if it is properly enforced – like the CIA participating in deep state drug running… Depends on who is running things. We should plan on legalizing and standardizing recreational drugs fer shure if we’re gonna do a CBDC. And other glitches.
Aye, there’s the rub. Who decides what is “bad stuff” and where is the regular person’s appeal process? Franz Kafka had some ideas about how an appeal process and trial might work in a system of inaccessable authority and unaccountable govt decision making. / ;)
Now that is one heck of a book, Flora. Pretty good movie as well
Well, here’s another thought. Maybe the currency statute (if there is one) is now archaic. Because there is no mention here on CBDCs about who qualifies to be a currency issuer. They seem to be folding crypto into sovereign. But no private entity, no private payments/barter system giant, no nobody who is not a taxing authority, like a chartered town or county or state, can issue a currency. So just how does private crypto get away with this? Stablecoin is still crypto, but they just made a deal to peg it to the dollar. That sure sounds like fudge to me. The underlying reasoning for a taxing authority is that if the currency is diluted it can be backed by taxes. Which might well be an archaic rule since everyone now is looking at “money” as if it were a completely new concept. But then, local taxing authority aside, anyone and their dog can give anyone else and their dog credit. Right? But on the other hand, nobody’s dumb enough to let crypto qualify as CBDC, right? aaaargh.
i very seriously doubt that the transparency that digital currency gives them will prevent the CIA from doing any illicit thing.
it won’t be used by them, or the transparency will never be used against them.
this is a one-way ride.
Nick Corbishley of late tapping a rich rein of “The Great Reset” policies..
Digital Vaccine Passports
Digital Currencies
Job losses to Al
You will own nothing and be happy ;)
I am a cynic. It just amazes me when I look at how much bits and bytes have enabled more bad activity from banks and bank services companies. Digitization just seems to make Greshams Dynamics easy peasy lemon squeezy.
S&L, Baby formula, 2008 bailout and economic crisis, Libor, Financial services fraud, fee explosion, stock fraud, medicare fraud, High speed trading, ‘shareholder value’ , legislative capture, Artificial intelligence being manipulated to game the legal system for private gain, Financialization as a weapon by both governments but increasingly unregulated private actors.
There is still much good being done with IT as a tool. Just as money used as a tool that it is ..is put to good use. Given the amount used on different balance sheets, the cynic I am, tells me most is going for negative real world uses
Sorry, I’m not up on this.
Is there a concise explanation somewhere of the difference between a Digital Currency versus an ordinary modern currency managed by banks with computers?
Is it as simple as eliminating physical cash tokens, and replacing them with electronic tokens you carry in your smartphone?
I’m really asking, without irony.
Here’s a pretty good one-paragraph explanation from a recent HBR article:
What’s different about CBDC and regular digital cash issued by commercial banks is that each CBDC unit of cash will have a unique, unchanging digital identity. It will also be a direct liability of the central bank, just as paper dollars or yuan currently are. This is a key differentiation from today’s digital currency, which is a liability of the issuing bank, even though it is in theory convertible into paper cash on demand – a feature predicated on that cash being available to the bank in physical form. It is this differentiation that largely explains why the CBDC is likely to disrupt the basic model of the banking system, which has always been based on paper cash (or convertibility into it).
One interesting oo
A very short explanation from Agustin Carstens, head of the BIS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpNnTuK5JJU
I call it the “Mother, may I” currency: Govt Central Bank, may I spend this money for this thing?”
One of the US founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson made a point about banks becoming over strong in a democracy.
”
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency first by inflation then by deflation the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered… I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies… The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people to whom it properly belongs.”
― Thomas Jefferson
Off-topic but I saw this link in The Saker’s comment threads and thought you might enjoy it if you hadn’t seen it. A “reporter” went after BoJo demanding NATO go after those Russians. Turns out this “reporter” worked for the Biden campaign and was a WEF junior hotshot.
I know nothing about the website source, but the article itself seems straightforward enough.
At present when you pay for something (other than with cash) your bank account is debited and if your payee’s account is with another bank the transaction will pass through the banks’ reserve accounts at the central bank before the payee’s account gets credited.
CBDC gives everyone a reserve account at the central bank so cuts out all the private banks in between.
Anonymous transaction capability like cash, smartphone based or otherwise, is an optional addon.
CBDC gives everyone a reserve account at the central bank so cuts out all the private banks in between.
CBDC makes this possible… but it’s the central bank that has to cut out the private banks. They could also just keep the digital part of the currency as a closed system, strictly for interbank or cross-border settlement, no?
I should think interbank and cross-border settlement is already done digitally.
Intermediation would not necessarily be entirely eliminated. Individuals could still transact through private banks if they were adding some kind of value. The CB might even choose to make the banks gatekeepers and not give individuals direct access to their reserve accounts.
There’s a lot of possible ways to do it in detail. We’ll need to keep a close eye on how it develops.
So fundamentally, this is to remove “ownership” of the Federal Reserve (Central Banks)? What is supposed to happen to existing Bitcoin or Ethereum or the 200 other self manufactured (mined? puhleezze) coins of the realm? Trade in program? What happens to gold and metals? Have you read this? Interesting.
https://davetroy.medium.com/world-war-iii-and-crypto-fcb02b064638
Going CB digital will make it easier to devalue the currency. No waiting for old currency to be turned in, and instant results.
By the way, I thought digital currencies were “as jumpy as a puppet on a string”. Feature or bug?
Does anyone know how the current monetary system actually works?
Not really.
If we invent something new we will know how it works.
Everyone seems to be coming to the same conclusion.
New crypto-currencies keep springing up, and even the central bankers are developing new digital currencies.
Rolling neoliberalism out globally has been a great opportunity to find out how the monetary system works.
The financial crises are actually the time when the big advances can be made, and there have been plenty of those. These are the keys to unlock the secrets of the monetary system.
When you do understand the monetary system you can achieve financial stability and there should be no financial crises.
Central bankers have a way to go yet before they really understand the monetary system.
How do the basic elements of the system fit together?
GDP measures the new goods and services being produced in the economy every year.
This is where the real wealth in the economy lies.
Private banks create the money supply.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
Money and debt come into existence together and disappear together like matter and anti-matter.
Bank loans create money and debt repayments to banks destroy money.
Bank loans create 97% of the money supply
The money supply ≈ public debt + private debt
Money and debt are like opposite sides of the same coin.
The money supply should grow with the economy, i.e. GDP.
More goods and services in the economy require more money in the economy.
It’s a debt based monetary system.
You want the debt to stay at a level where it will not adversely affect the economy.
You want GDP, the money supply and debt to grow together so the economy is not held back by the debt contained within it.
How do you achieve this?
The idea is that banks lend into business and industry to increase the productive capacity of the economy.
Business and industry don’t have to wait until they have the money to expand. They can borrow the money and use it to expand today, and then pay that money back in the future.
The economy can then grow more rapidly than it would without banks.
Debt grows with GDP and there are no problems
The banks create money and use it to create real wealth
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/quarterly-bulletin/2014/money-creation-in-the-modern-economy.pdf
When you have a firm grip on what money and wealth really are; and know how banks work, it all falls into place.
Catherine Fitts predicted this:
“We have what we have been building for the last 20 or 30 years, and it’s getting much more obvious, but it’s been covert most of the time. They basically want digital control systems through the financial system, through the health system and government systems to implement control. That control is delivered one person at a time. That’s why the ‘vaccine passports’ and ‘central bank digital currencies’ (CBDC) are so dangerous. They are trying to create complete transaction control. If they don’t want you going five miles from your home, your electric car will not work more than five miles from your home. They are talking about putting in extraordinary digital control systems and literally turning your car and your home into a digital concentration camp.”
https://www.sott.net/article/463509-Catherine-Austin-Fitts-We-re-Headed-for-a-Digital-Concentration-Camp
Yesterdays conspiracy theories become today’s reality.
I agree with Sound of the Suburbs above, although I prefer to use slightly different terminology.
As stated above, about 97% of all US dollars individually and collectively are backed by “the full faith and credit” of hundreds of millions (and for all currencies world-wide billions) of people and organizations: simply their promises to repay.
The remaining US dollars, backed by the “full faith and credit” of the United States, are the bills that apparently are mostly used by criminals around the world. Thank you, Fed.
Criminals are opportunists. Methinks that prior to WWII the pound sterling as the world reserve currency was the preferred form for the international criminals. If the world reserve currency shifts again, why the world’s criminals will shift again. Shorter: world criminals don’t decide the dominant world currency, they simply go along with the reigning monetary situation as best suits them. And they are ready to change horses at a moment’s notice. My 2 cents. / ;)
Correct, of course. Criminals don’t decide which currency should be the dominant one in the world, they just use whatever one it is – and currently it just happens to be stacks of Benjamins.
My favorite “dominant world currency” is the Marie Therese thaler
From the link:
Still in use! Wow!
Ok, so no longer quite a “world currency” and not necessarily only used by criminals, but still, used in lawless regions today.
Sweden has gone almost cashless. Not quite the same as a digital currency I know but I am curious how the black market handles this. Can’t pay for your nose candy by card after all.
Germany is still very cash friendly and although credit cards have become more popular in the last 20 years cash is still widely used. The ECB and IMF types are not happy about this and are using “fighting organized crime” as a pretext to squeeze out cash. Oh the irony…