Central Bank Digital Currencies or CBDCs are on their way. That is according to ING’s Chief Economist, Mark Cliffe.
In a post and video, the global bank states:
“Rapid advances in distributed ledger technology have spurred debate about the possibilities, advantages and drawbacks of central bank digital currencies. The principal limits and trade-offs seem to stem from CBDC’s economic, monetary and financial contexts, and depend on underlying policy and political preferences concerning privacy, data administration, market power, cybersecurity, and the division of labour between the public and private sectors.”
CBDCs are coming within the next 2 to 3 years as Facebook’s Libra has put pressure on central banks to innovate and adapt, says Cliffe. He believes there is a “sense of urgency” within the policy community. Many pundits see Libra as DOA. But migrating paper money to digital is gaining more support – as long as it is managed by a government entity.
Cliffe adds that a fully digital currency could mean the demise of the paper kind – which continues to be the store of value of choice when it comes to illicit activities. Going all-in on CDBC’s would potentially make it quite simple for the authorities to track transactions – similar to tracking Bitcoin movement.
By having a CBDC, central banks will have a “new range of policy options” including moving further into negative rates – not necessarily a good thing.
Of note, China is expected to announce a Yuan based CBDC any day now. Chinese officials have said that their crypto would not be totally based off of blockchain (or DLT) technology as it is simply not robust enough to handle the type of volume necessary. A digital currency does not necessarily mean one that is managed via distributed ledger technology.
The brief video from ING is embedded below.
