The buzz and speculation about CBDCs continues with most of the sovereign nations across the globe being in some stage of prep, study, pre-launch or full launch of their own version.   In this piece from Kitco, the author discusses CBDCs as mostly inevitable in some form and potentially troubling, using PayPal and Ye (Kanye) as analogous examples as to why.

Keep in mind that to date, at least in our purview, the CBDC use cases are retail (to some extent B2B but not in any scalable way), replacing printed bank notes with digital representations, with the main question being how will they be distributed (through commercial banks or central banks) in terms of account management.   Hence the author raises the privacy question and uses the ‘cancel’ of Ye’s JPMC business accounts and PayPal’s aborted ‘misinformation’ policy as reason’s why, with the concern being toxic overlaps between business and politics. The author goes on to discuss this point, using the recent crypto reports from the U.

S. executive branch, emanating from the March White House executive order, as examples of how crypto policy can have all sorts of extraneous extras that can be tied to ideology and not purely commercial exchanges. Then there is a point made about the awful stock market year and how bitcoin—and we suppose other cryptos—remain a viable choice as alternative investment options.

It’s worth a read. Overview by Steve Murphy, Director, Commercial and Enterprise Payments Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group.

By Steve Murphy
Oct 24, 2022 00:00
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