The IMF Launches 'Central Bank Digital Currency' Handbook, Says CBDCs Could Someday Replace Cash (cnbc.com) 77
An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC:
Central bank digital currencies have the potential to replace cash, but adoption could take time, said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday.
"CBDCs can replace cash which is costly to distribute in island economies," she said Wednesday at the Singapore FinTech Festival. "They can offer resilience in more advanced economies. And they can improve financial inclusion where few hold bank accounts." [...] "CBDCs would offer a safe and low-cost alternative [to cash]. They would also offer a bridge to go between private monies and a yardstick to measure their value, just like cash today which we can withdraw from our banks," the IMF chief said.
The IMF has said that more than 100 countries are exploring CBDCs — or approximately 60% of countries in the world. "The level of global interest in CBDCs is unprecedented. Several central banks have already launched pilots or even issued a CBDC," the IMF said in a September report. According to a 2022 survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements, of the 86 central banks surveyed, 93% said they were exploring CBDCs, while 58% said they were likely to or may possibly issue a retail CBDC in either the short or medium term. But as of June, only 11 countries have adopted CBDCs, with an additional 53 in advanced planning stages and 46 researching the topic, according to data from the Atlantic Council...
On Wednesday, the fund launched a CBDC handbook as a reference guide for policymakers around the world...
Georgieva also said that artificial intelligence "could amplify some of the benefits of CBDCs" by providing accurate credit scoring and personalized support.
"CBDCs can replace cash which is costly to distribute in island economies," she said Wednesday at the Singapore FinTech Festival. "They can offer resilience in more advanced economies. And they can improve financial inclusion where few hold bank accounts." [...] "CBDCs would offer a safe and low-cost alternative [to cash]. They would also offer a bridge to go between private monies and a yardstick to measure their value, just like cash today which we can withdraw from our banks," the IMF chief said.
The IMF has said that more than 100 countries are exploring CBDCs — or approximately 60% of countries in the world. "The level of global interest in CBDCs is unprecedented. Several central banks have already launched pilots or even issued a CBDC," the IMF said in a September report. According to a 2022 survey conducted by the Bank for International Settlements, of the 86 central banks surveyed, 93% said they were exploring CBDCs, while 58% said they were likely to or may possibly issue a retail CBDC in either the short or medium term. But as of June, only 11 countries have adopted CBDCs, with an additional 53 in advanced planning stages and 46 researching the topic, according to data from the Atlantic Council...
On Wednesday, the fund launched a CBDC handbook as a reference guide for policymakers around the world...
Georgieva also said that artificial intelligence "could amplify some of the benefits of CBDCs" by providing accurate credit scoring and personalized support.
Frantically buying silver and gold (Score:1)
What would you do with it? (Score:1)
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California's "special residents" seems the be handling megacorps just fine:
California targets smash-and-grabs with $267 million program aimed at ‘brazen’ store thefts
https://apnews.com/article/cal... [apnews.com]
Are Southern California mob robberies part of a retail crime wave? It’s complicated
https://www.latimes.com/opinio... [latimes.com]
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www.fark.com/realworld
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What would you do with it?
They'd rub it between their fingers while saying "my preciousss", obviously.
Re:What would you do with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
But CBDCs are worse... besides privacy issues or the ability to be seized easily, this electronic currency also has the nasty ability to be earmarked for certain expenses only, a little bit like food stamps. Your unemployment tokens can be used to buy food, but they wont spend at the liquor store. Sounds great... until governments will allow (or force) companies to do the same thing: your wages will come pre-allocated to a healthy food budget, a smaller meat budget, a booze and smokes budget that will get squeezed a little tighter every year, and so on. Far fetched? This sort of stuff is already enthusiastically being discussed in certain circles, some of which quite influential ones.
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Another disadvantage of gold is that it's dead wealth: it earns no interest and is a poor long term investment.
It earns no interest but inflation serves the purpose of interest for a precious metal.
I just go back to the example of the 1964 silver quarter.
In 1964, the minimum wage was $1.25 per hour. If you had 5 1964 silver quarters today, they'd be worth over $21.
That's just under 5% annual return over the past 59 years.
By no means is that exemplary but it's also not just a dead asset either.
LK
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Agree. Never, ever accept a CBDC. No privacy and too much chance on government abuse.
CBDCs can work if done properly (Score:3)
The first thing that you'd have to do to make them work properly is lock the exchange rate between them and the corresponding regular currency. That would stop the abuses of speculation. Second thing is to have a network set up to verify transactions at a reasonable rate, especially for transactions less than about 5 dollars or equivalent. People won't use it if the service charge is more than the transaction amount.
If you run it like the current crop of cryptocurrencies, it will fail. The only people who'll use it will be speculators and scammers.
no cash advance fees on some uses (Score:2)
That can be things like.
Monthly bills paid with a credit card
Other types of debt including auto loans paid with a credit card
Wire transfers
Traveler’s checks
Money orders
Foreign currency exchanges
Lottery tickets
Gaming chips and other wagers
Re:CBDCs can work if done properly (Score:5, Insightful)
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TL;DR: What's considered a legal and "just" business is a matter of opinion, and the question being asked here is: "Should only the opinions of bankers be consider
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Perhaps not the best example, given that being allowed to drive a truck is dependent on having a government issued licence and a government registered vehicle, along with mandatory government regulated insurance in most countries.
Europe deals with that kind of thing by having strong human rights protections, which make access to a basic bank account and services something that governments not only can't take away, they actually have to ensure is available too.
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The first thing that you'd have to do to make them work properly is lock the exchange rate between them and the corresponding regular currency. That would stop the abuses of speculation. Second thing is to have a network set up to verify transactions at a reasonable rate, especially for transactions less than about 5 dollars or equivalent. People won't use it if the service charge is more than the transaction amount.
If you run it like the current crop of cryptocurrencies, it will fail. The only people who'll use it will be speculators and scammers.
And once the 'corresponding regular currency' disappears, what exactly stops those in control of the value of the only currency left at that point, to shift like the winds in their favor?
We had a standard before. The Gold Standard. Let's not be ignorant here. The value of a digital currency can and will change like daily stock value at the abuses of Greed. You already know this. Predicting what Greed will do, hardly requires a crystal ball.
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The first thing that you'd have to do to make them work properly is lock the exchange rate between them and the corresponding regular currency.
This is entirely the point.
They aren't making a separate currency for the country. It's just a digital version of the regular currency and will be worth the same.
If you run it like the current crop of cryptocurrencies, it will fail.
Nobody is proposing that.
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If you run it like the current crop of cryptocurrencies, it will fail.
Nobody is proposing that.
Perhaps, but you also overlooked the other highly corrupt suggestion from the parent. Charging a transaction fee/service charge? Yeah, how about fuck that nonsense. We sure as hell don't need another layer of 'fees' on top of Federal income tax, State income tax, Social Security/Medicare tax, tax on the purchasing of goods, tax on collecting money in exchange for goods, and all the other shit that penalizes the literal use of money. Transaction/card processing fees are the main reason people running bus
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The other point is to actually lower the fees you're complaining about. It would be cheaper and easier to use than anything currently available.
Not that I'm saying there aren't other kinds of problems, as there definitely are. But for you both to focus on the non problems... Seems like you don't really understand what CBDCs even are.
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The other point is to actually lower the fees you're complaining about. It would be cheaper and easier to use than anything currently available.
Believing those fees will stay low even if they start out at a "competitive" rate (vs. blatant collusion), is an exercise in futility when Government or Central Banking is involved. You act like having their hand in it will result in some kind of priority for The People they're creating it for. We don't even elect Representatives anymore. We elect politicians who bend the knee to their Donor Class. A Donor Class that currently gets obscenely rich with micro-transaction fees. Like it's fucking hard to p
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For the system to work you have to have nodes that validate transactions. That requires hardware infrastructure, and there has to be some way for the operators to pay for that infrastructure. You definitely don't want only the central bank to be the one to verify transactions, that just creates the same bottleneck we see with current financial systems and allows the central bank to control what businesses can exist. But you can let the central bank operate validators and use their service charge to set an e
can improve financial inclusion... WAT? (Score:3)
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If you hadn't noticed banking is already like that. Any transaction can be reversed if the banks involved agree. It's all tracked, and most countries ban anonymous accounts, even Switzerland now.
The concern here is that crypto currency pulls all the transaction records together on a single blockchain, which makes it easier to trace money. It can be done today, it just requires more work to follow it through multiple bank's systems. I'd say the main risk is the usual one with technology that makes things eas
ELI5... is this scrip? (Score:2)
This sounds like company scrip to me, or at best a stablecoin (which is just scrip with a blockchain).
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fiat is national scrip, whats your point?
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There is a difference between money that is backed by a government (i.e. with a lot of guns like the US, China, the EU, or even Russia), versus digital chits that have nothing behind them. There have been many, discussions on this on Slashdot when someone talking about crypto points to the USD as "fiat" currency, but values BTC and altcoins in USD.
The USD has its inflationary issues, but with the inflation rate slowing, it is fairly stable.
Scrip on the other hand is effectively worthless, as there isn't an
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I think what you missed is that the "CB" in "CBDC" stands for "central bank". These would be just as backed by their governments as their existing physical currencies.
Internet Outage (Score:4, Informative)
Australia just had a 12 hour Internet outage this week.
People who had cash on hand were fine.
People who went to their bank to get cash could not.
And we don't even have a grid that can handle a Carrington Event. 18 months.
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Yes Australia had a 12 hour outage it affected 1/3 of the population, public services, banking and emergency responders.
The point is critical governments services were impacted either partially or completely. Central banks would need to invent a decentralised digital currency that enabled transactions outside of the network in order to avoid this significant issue.
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Indeed. And that outage could well have gotten quite a bit longer. The tech-level of the human race is _not_ sufficient to go to all digital money. Maybe in a few decades.
When will banana NFTs be a legal tender in the US? (Score:3)
Personally I think they will go nicely with my Ugly Monkey NFTs (tm)(r) which I can't enjoy at the moment because I was temporarily blinded by some stupid UV laser show.
Is the US dollar not a digital currency already? (Score:3)
There's 5 trillion in physical currency (M0), but 20 trillion in deposits (M1, M2)? Most transactions are computer/digital?
https://take-profit.org/en/sta... [take-profit.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It still relies on SWIFT.
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Yeah this is what am confused about as well. Most countries have some form of currency transfer / payment system available online.
I know I can use online payment / mobile payment using a phone and the money is transfered from my account to the other side / shop / service provider within seconds.
So whats the difference between this and one of the already available system that allows you to make payment digitally?
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51% attacks require a public blockchain or similar with a decentralized consensus mechanism. CBDCs will be more like XRP. Fully centralized.
I would never use this (Score:1)
Seriously ... just feels ripe for abuse by the government, criminals, fraud, and generally much riskier and less private than cash.
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I kind of like the idea of private banks with private 'crypto' - not actual cryptocurrency (which doesn't work in the real world), but just anonymous electronic 'cash' to which you hold the private keys, keys that can be refreshed at any time. Carry it on a flash drive with a little LCD and a couple of buttons to let you select amounts to transfer, show your balance, etc. No mining, no Byzantine Generals problem. Everything's just in a standard database hosted by the bank.
Back it up to a secondary flash
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It's these central bank fixed value coins that are the real scam. Just another means for the government to control your life.
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Nope. Actual cryptocurrency doesn't work on reasonable scales at reasonable speeds, and can only get worse as time goes on. It is completely inadequate for typical financial transactions but wonderful for money laundering and milking rubes.
You're just a cultist. I hope you at least got some nice robes out of it.
Exciting Future Awaits (Score:1)
Apathy (Score:4, Insightful)
>"Central bank digital currencies have the potential to replace cash, but adoption could take time"
And an apathetic populous that is willing to roll over. Many of us don't want EVERY possible transaction to REQUIRE technology and government control and spying.
The goal to have more options is good. The goal to take away hard currency is bad.
100% Digital is the death of Freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
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A fully digital currency will result in a shadow economy running parallel. The shadow economy will likely be far more efficient and decentralised with anonymous transactions. Once one country has a shadow economy currency system it will quickly spread around the world.
It won't be bitcoin. As bitcoin is a value store not a currency. It take far to long to process a transaction. Also it is now essentially no long anonymous. To many data correlations are putting names to wallet's.
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And it is going that way, and people are willing to let go of their freedom for a bit of convenience.
Combine CBDCs with a full on Chinese social credit system, or whatever west will have if/when the rulling class manage to fool people into accepting such a system, and that's it. Game over.
There's another thing about CBDCs, and that's programmable [gi-de.com] CBDCs. Here's a quote from that site:
"Programmable money is money with in-built rules and that comes with constraints for the user. With these rules, money could a
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That's already the case for some people, it's just new to you. For example, the police in the US can steal your cash and keep it, largely with impunity. Particularly for foreigners, it's advisable not to carry large amounts of cash at any time.
The solution is not to rely on cash, a physical token that can easily be confiscated. It is to enshrine your rights in law and enforce those rights with harsh penalties for abusers.
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One thing to worry about is the data history. If we are tracked today by the "good" folks, that same data, if not deleted, can later be analyzed by
Obviously ... (Score:2)
The IMF Launches 'Central Bank Digital Currency' Handbook
Should the Handbook be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of its actions.
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Should the Handbook be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of its actions.
Thanks for the laugh!
All the crazy batshit stuff the bitcoiners said... (Score:2)
Is starting to sound a bit more realistic and that doesn't make me pleased.
I don't want the nutcase bitcoin people right and I sure as shit don't want CBDCs either.
This is a pretty dire sign and they've been slowly mentioning this the past 12 to 24 months.
How long until our money is entirely in control of others?
Non remunerated CBDC are useless (Score:2)
During high interest rate your wallet app has to juggle between CBDC petty cash and the "real" bank offering interest, during low interest rate it has to max out CBDC. It's an unstable mess.
As long as classical deposit banking exists, CBDC makes very little sense. Just create a fast and low cost interbank transfer system instead (like FedNow). If banks aren't willing to offer online banking to poor people with minimal deposits, give a little subsidy.
Once all currency is digital, it can be hacked ! (Score:2)
I beg to differ (Score:2)
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For as long as politicians, spies, militaries, etc., need to discreetly & untraceably distribute & receive funds, i.e. anything from envelopes to palette loads of cash, I can't see physical bank notes disappearing. When do you suppose that need will disappear? I guess there's an argument for blockchain in some instances?
It's digital cash. Hardly a stretch to assume there won't be "dark" money there too. Fire up another flavor of it, for "government" use. Created from the new digital presses that replaced the physical ones.
Why? (Score:1)
So, what does a cryptocurrency bring to the table that the existing systems don't provide? 'Cause it seems an awful lot like the answer is "nothing" -- that the only reason the tech bros are pushing so hard for digital currencies is that they want to supplant the old school financiers with themselves.
How does that benefit anyone but th