It is well-known that the IMF’s relationship with the digital asset industry has been quite love-hate. CBDCs are issued by central banks and recorded as central bank liabilities, in contrast to crypto assets. Global central banks are examining the potential benefits and risks of CBDCs from multiple perspectives.
The IMF notes that, if designed prudently, CBDC could reduce the incentives for adopting crypto assets while simultaneously supporting public policy goals such as the efficiency and stability of payment systems in the digital age.
The IMF conducted an inventory of six countries with advanced CBDC pilot programs, and three overarching themes emerged. These CBDCs are centered on financial inclusion, while others are centered on resilience enhancement. The IMF concluded that CBDC promotes market competition in other nations with dominant private sector service providers.
IMF points to CBDCs as a means of financial inclusion
Recently, the IMF’s Deputy Managing Director took a position on CBDCs that has unnerved crypto investors. The International Monetary Fund has advocated digital currencies issued by central banks as a road to financial inclusion. However, there may be more nefarious implications about control and surveillance.
Last week, at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meeting, Deputy Managing Director Bo Li stated that a CBDC’s programmability might enhance financial inclusion. Bo Li continued by explaining:
The third way we think CBDCs can improve financial inclusion is through what we call programmability. That is, CBDCs can allow government agencies and private sector players to program, to create smart contracts to allow targeted policy functions […] For example warfare payments, consumption coupons […] This potential programmability can help government agencies to precisely target their support to those people that need support.
Bo Li
According to the IMF’s Deputy Managing Director, funds might be programmed to be used for a certain purpose. These purposes are a direct link to government authorization.
CBDCs turned surveillance tools?
The conclusion that may be drawn from these remarks is that governments will be able to program money to regulate what individuals can and cannot spend. Crypto enthusiasts took to Twitter to express discontentment. One user with the alias ‘The Bitcoin-Wife Paper’ went on the state.
He is talking about financial inclusion while the elephant in the room we all know is financial EXCLUSION.
Crypto twitter
Analysts stated earlier this year that a CBDC would eliminate what little financial privacy remains in the world. Even Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari is skeptical about a CBDC. Previously, he stated that it makes sense for China to desire one as a monitoring weapon but that no other nation would desire one.
The terrifying prospect of programmable finance represents a dismal future. Here, authoritarian authorities and banks regulate who has access to money and who does not, as well as how it is spent.
This is likely to result in extreme examples of financial exclusion for people who do not meet the government’s requirements to access its digital money. The only true vehicles of open and free money accessible to everyone, everywhere, are decentralized crypto assets […] unless the state has prohibited them. Earlier this year, the IMF disregarded crypto as a threat to global financial stability.
CBDCs take root in traditional finance
Previously, the managing director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, argued that CBDCs might “possibly offer better resilience, higher safety, greater availability, and lower prices.”
According to Georgieva, there has been a worldwide surge of interest in CBDCs, with approximately one hundred countries investigating CBDCs. The nations are either in the research, testing or distribution stages. Georgieva stated that the IMF has been “engaged extensively” in CBDC research and has offered “technical help” to several member nations as they seek the creation of their own CBDCs.
China has nonetheless taken the CBDCs’ adoption by the horns. China is exerting significant effort to deploy its e-CNY central bank digital currency, with transaction volume exceeding 100 billion yuan (about $14 billion) to date.
The CBDC, which is rigorously regulated and supervised by the state, is accepted by more than 5,6 million retailers. Researchers from the Chinese government have also proposed a Pan-Asian CBDC pegged to the currencies of the 13 ASEAN member states.
China would also exercise control over this as it seeks to isolate itself and its hugely influenced regional neighbors from a surging greenback. The recent decline in crypto assets has left investors in a loss-induced numbness and uncertainty. But digital currency is clearly the future of money. The question is, what will it look like?
Regulation is crucial. Aditya Narain and Marina Moretti of the IMF explain that the regulatory fabric is currently being sewn, and a pattern is expected to emerge. However, they suggest that the longer this process takes, the more national authorities will get encumbered by disparate regulatory frameworks.
The IMF asks for internationally coordinated regulation to bring order to markets, boost consumer trust, and provide a safe environment for innovation.
