Fed expert Jim Bianco offered some very interesting thoughts on this topic during his latest interview with MacroVoices' Erik Townsend, where he offered an interesting prediction.
First, Bianco pointed out that many of the central banks that are most advanced in their CBDC projects are members of the emerging and frontier market classifications.
People remember how the Canadian government treated people who donated to the Canadian Truckers (they were essentially frozen out of the financial system for something that was completely legal and normal). Because of this, they remember how easily the government can exercise control over their lives via their money. So, presumably, millions of people wouldn't be comfortable with central banks exercising even more direct control of the financial system (having wiped out the intermediaries of the banking system due to CBDCs).
And then the Canadian government invented a word called retroactive law, that when you donate it in the beginning of February, to these truckers that was perfectly legal and fine. But by the end of February, when we decided that they we didn't like that group, we're gonna go retroactively back and punish you by freezing your account for doing that activity.
I don't want to make it easy for them. I don't want to keep my money with a central bank directly in a digital currency. So they've got issues that they have to resolve the issues are not technological issues. The issues are more about control, privacy rights in policy that they have to work through. And so therefore, I think we're still a ways away from seeing a central bank digital currency, because those issues haven't been resolved
I think what's much more likely is the CBDCs get developed, and they get launched with a big flop, and nobody really cares.
The biggest obstacles to CBDC is skepticism and reluctance among the end users, since CBDCs will never be designed with the needs and desires of the users in mind (on the contrary, they're being designed in accordance to the rules of the end government).
Even in China, even though they were giving you free money, with all those rules, didn't go over very well. People don't like you know, to have all of those restrictions.
The creators want to do it, because they say, good, we could do all these rules and permissions. And we could we can affect behavior by changing the parameters. And the people that would use it say, well, I'd only use it if you left me alone, completely parameterless with it, let me do with it what I want when I want it. And that's why you're seeing people more and more gravitate towards the crypto space that is permissionless, that is decentralized, so no one controls it as well, too.
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Readers can listen to the full interview below:
MacroVoices #319 Jim Bianco: The Future of Decentralized Finance https://macrovoices.podbean.com/e/macrovoices-319-jim-bianco-the-future-of-decentralized-finance/
MacroVoices #319 Jim Bianco: The Future of Decentralized Finance
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A recent report from PWC on CBDCs:
The race to digital money is on – PwC’s 2022 CBDC Global Index shows which central banks are in the lead #20320 https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/news-room/press-releases/2022/pwc-cbdc-global-index-2022.html
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An article from The Block on a recently published BIS survey on CBDCs:
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A post on SN sharing a useful tool:
Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Tracker #6946 https://cbdctracker.org
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