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The Almighty Buck

24 Central Banks Will Have Digital Currencies by 2030 (reuters.com) 44

Posted by msmash from the shape-of-things-to-come dept.
Some two dozen central banks across emerging and advanced economies are expected to have digital currencies in circulation by the end of the decade, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) found in a survey published on Monday. From a report: Central banks around the globe have been studying and working on digital versions of their currencies for retail use to avoid leaving digital payments to the private sector amid an accelerating decline of cash. Some are also looking at wholesale versions for transactions between financial institutions.

Most of the new Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) will emerge in the retail space, where eleven central banks could join peers in the Bahamas, the Eastern Caribbean, Jamaica and Nigeria which already run live digital retail currencies, the BIS found in its survey of 86 central banks conducted late 2022. On the wholesale side, which in future could allow financial institutions to access new functionalities thanks to tokenisation, nine central banks could launch CBDCs, the BIS said. "Enhancing cross-border payments is among the key drivers of central banks' work on wholesale CBDCs," the authors of the report wrote.
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24 Central Banks Will Have Digital Currencies by 2030 More

24 Central Banks Will Have Digital Currencies by 2030

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  • The era of physical money is over! (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @12:29PM (#63674185)

    Yay! My net worth is a database entry somewhere. All I have to do to withdraw it is prove my identity, which is also a database entry and collection of facts stored somewhere. Thank God it can't be changed by anyone and my right to it cannot be denied arbitrarily.

    It can't be, right?

    • "Physical" money ended with appearance of book keeping and the invention of concepts of loan and debt.

      "Digital" just means that it's all written on a computer somewhere, like it already is, but now with an individual serial number for every unit of currency. Like paper currency.
      I.e. All money will be trackable and traceable.

      Making sales of illegal items rather obvious - unless the seller figures out a way to sell you an imaginary property along with the real item.
      Say, you get a live performance of a song wi

      • Making sales of illegal items rather obvious

        Only the dumb would list illegal drugs as the line item. They would change that to a shirt or something.

    • My net worth is a database entry somewhere.

      If your money is in a bank, then your net worth is already a database entry that is already subject to any fear you could list here. A cash-only standard of living has been impractical for a long time already. It's even largely impractical among friends and family.

      The cash society has all but disappeared already. There are some drawbacks, but they are profoundly outweighed by the benefits

  • I'm assuming we are talking about a central-bank "digital currency" that has the same value as the national currency (one US "digital dollar" = a $1 Federal Reserve Note = 4 quarters from the US mint).

    If the digital currency were at least as untraceable as paper currency, I could see the value over paper money (spoiler alert: Bitcoin etc. is easier to trace after-the-fact than an individual piece of paper currency).

    If the digital currency were more efficient than existing electronic payment systems, then th

    • Re:I don't see the point (Score:4, Insightful)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @01:21PM (#63674431) Homepage

      If the digital currency were at least as untraceable as paper currency, I could see the value over paper money

      Can't see any reason to think that digital currency would be untraceable.

      ...If the digital currency has other advantages over other payment systems, then there may also be a use case, but again, not as a replacement for physical currency.

      These days I use my credit card for almost all my transactions; hardly ever use actual cash. But the credit card companies take 2.5% of every transaction. Cash, on the other hand, does not have that 2.5% tax.

      • "Cash, on the other hand, does not have that 2.5% tax."

        Cash does not have that 'tax' directly charged to you. However, handling physical money costs money.

    • "as untraceable as paper currency"

      Every paper bill has a serial number.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by davidwr ( 791652 )

        The serial # is why I said "as untraceable as" rather than "untraceable like."

        It's nearly impossible to do a full trace on a piece of currency unless you are able to grab the serial number every time it changes hands.

        With a public ledger, you pretty much ARE able to trace every transaction that hits the ledger (there are work-arounds to protect privacy, such as trading physical "cold wallets," but they are usually more trouble than they are worth).

        With the current state of things, currency is harder to trac

  • Visa & Mastercard duopoly (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @01:02PM (#63674335)
    What they're indirectly talking about is the Visa Mastercard duopoly in many western countries & further afield. Governments don't want to have their entire retail banking sectors beholden to two American corporations. We've already seen them arbitrarily impose sanctions on organisations that have broken no laws but have upset rich & powerful people in the USA. Hopefully, these new central banking exchanges will have some kind of independent legal process & democratic oversight before imposing such penalties. That'd make a big difference.

    • Correct. Either we have our governments create and manage digital currencies, or Visa and Mastercard will become the gatekeepers for all the developed world's finances. The former is much preferable to the latter.

      • The last time I've seen the government make any kind of useful standard would have been decades ago. Governments buy solutions from companies. If there is a company selling CBDC products, isn't that a huge risk if the code is not incredibly well audited? (And somehow tested, with millions of dollars, lol.)

        • I'm assuming that CBDCs will follow an open standard protocol that all central banks can implement freely & that they'll be interoperable between central banks in all participating countries. I expect that the code for implementing the protocol will be free and open source & I reckon that there'd be a lot of eyes on the protocol & code to ensure that it's practical, efficient, & secure. I couldn't imagine the EU & its 27 member states, for one, doing it any other way.

    • Are you assuming that consumers will have access to the CBDC system and it won't just be between banks? Unlikely, because then you'd be able to freely move your money, and what incentive would you have to store it at a bank?

      • Visa & Mastercard aren't your bank either. They're a money transfer service between customers of banks. Banks will be able to use the CBDC system instead of Visa & Mastercard, hopefully with lower transfer fees.

  • Federal and state Laws are needed (Score:3)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @01:08PM (#63674361)

    To ensure they are not acting like a cartel to make using CBDCs compulsory and to protect the privacy of transactions.

  • This Isn't About Convenience, It's About Control! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by manlygeek ( 958223 ) on Monday July 10, 2023 @09:57PM (#63675913) Homepage
    Let's not fool ourselves. Once CBDCs take over, cash goes out the windows and every transaction is monitored, tracked, and controlled. This is a dictator's dream. Have too much impact on the climate (i.e. you had cheeseburgers twice this month)? No more beef for you!! Looks like you really need to go to the gym. No more Ubers for you unless you are going to the gym.... Increased convenience with the helicopter mommy state. NO THANKS!!
    • Even better than the helicopter mommy state is the helicopter money. Governments can use digital currency to redistribute wealth. Dropping $1,000 in everyone's bank account seems like a good idea. We saw how well that worked during COVID in the US, but I am sure the government will get it right the next time.

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