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Even Central Banks Are Losing Faith in CBDCs (ft.com) 31

Central bank support for digital currencies appears to have fallen sharply, with only 13% of central bankers surveyed by OMFIF Digital Monetary Institute backing CBDCs as a cross-border payment solution, down from 31% in 2023.

The survey found just 10% of respondents are actively developing CBDCs, compared with 21% last year. The decline comes despite major initiatives including the Bank for International Settlements' Project Agora and China's Project mBridge. The BIS recently withdrew from mBridge, creating a potential split between Western and emerging market payment systems. Nearly half of surveyed bankers favor improving existing instant payment infrastructure over CBDCs.

Even Central Banks Are Losing Faith in CBDCs

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  • The central banks never liked digital currencies. Now they can dislike them because digital currencies are bad for the environment.

    • by guruevi ( 827432 )

      How are digital currencies "bad" for the environment? Almost all currencies are currently "mostly" digital, your money in the bank is a digital currency it sits in a database, you can still convert it to physical currency or goods, but the point of CBDCs is that you eliminate physical currency (the EU is pushing this hard with the Euro) so that banks and governments can monitor all transactions and inflate those values at will or block your buying power if you do not agree with them.

      • How are digital currencies "bad" for the environment?

        If they are based on proof of work, the answer is obvious.

        For the ones that aren't, they probably aren't, unless there is something stupidly inefficient about them.

        • CBDCs would work on a centralized ledger using a proof system similar to XRP. They won't use PoW.

          • CBDCs would work on a centralized ledger using a proof system similar to XRP. They won't use PoW.

            CBDCs are the one kind of crypto currency that could actually make sense, a true digital equivalent of cash, but still a fiat currency -- which is what we want, because debt-backed fiat currencies are far and away the best form of money we've yet invented.

            Bitcoin, etc., are the digital equivalent of precious metals, except much worse. Like precious metals, they can't expand and contract the money supply with the needs of the economy and if our monetary system were based on them we'd be back to economic b

      • "How are digital currencies "bad" for the environment?"

        Because "mining" for such currencies (a la Bitcoin) requires large, high capacity data centers, with the attendant large power and water requirements.

    • besides scams & money laundering. So there is that too...
    • Central banks love digital currencies. They don't love any currency they can't control, which is a different matter. This is why the finding in TFA is surprising so many, who assumed central banks would be going full speed towards a world where people can't engage in transactions the bank can't monitor and control.
  • I'm old enough to remember when Crowdstrike took out commerce for a day and people used cash to carry on with life.

  • CBDC? (Score:5, Informative)

    by 278MorkandMindy ( 922498 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @11:50AM (#64977715)

    While there are context clues (Digital Currency and Central Bank), it doesn't hurt to assume a significant portion of the audience isn't familiar with a specific collection of letters. Putting the explanation in the article would be a good thing, especially as the article doesn't mention the DC's (Digital Currency) in question are not generic, but from/owned by the actual bank itself.

  • CBDCs? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Chris Mattern ( 191822 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @12:08PM (#64977761)

    Cannabidiol currency?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by jonbryce ( 703250 )

      Central Bank Digital Currency.
      A re-implementation of what already exists on a different and less efficient type of database.

  • Nobody but cental banks and their control freak minions wanted CBDCs in the first place.

  • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Thursday November 28, 2024 @02:48PM (#64978097)

    Central bank accounts generally already represent a CBDC, you just need to be a bank to use them.

    Some people wanted to extend that to the peons for some good reasons (anti-censorship, financial services as a public utility, replace cash etc) but the damage to existing finacial service providers would be immense, politically impossible.

    Fednow doesn't even mandate banks to be able to respond to Requests For Payment and EU can't even mandate QR codes for Sepa Instant. CBDC for the peons never ever.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The reason China wanted it was because they already have parallel trading systems like WePay. The government isn't too keen on a private company handling such a large proportion of transactions, and some kind of crypto currency with central authority that they could oblige everyone to use would both give them better oversight and allow more competition that benefits consumers.

  • Waiting to see them scream when someone compromises their digital wallet.

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