Any digital currency a central bank creates “needs to coexist with cash and other types of money in a flexible and innovative payment system,” Jerome Powell, chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve, said in an 18 March press conference.
The Fed is experimenting in-house with digital currencies, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston is collaborating with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to research and study them.
China has extensively tested its digital currency in public trials and plans to introduce it nationally next year. Central banks in Europe also are developing national digital money.
The Fed is moving more slowly, arguing that as a steward of the world’s reserve currency, it needs to innovate cautiously.
TREND FORECAST: Led by China, the world will be going digital. Or, as we had forecast last July, “IT’S OFFICIAL: DIRTY CASH TO DIGITAL TRASH.”
On Saturday, the Peoples Bank of China announced it was ramping up its digital RMB, or e-CNY testing scheme, assuring “The protection of users’ privacy by e-CNY is at the highest level among all of the existing payment tools.”
In plain English, they know when every yuan was spent, who spent it, where it was spent, and what it was spent on so they get their taxes and can further control the population. What happens in China with digital cash will become the New ABnormal throughout the world in the coming years… and decades.
