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As we had forecast, central banks, led by China, would be going digital.
And last week Hyun Song Shim, director of research at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), said in a 23 June statement reported by the New York Times that digital currencies issued by central banks “are an idea whose time has come.”
The BIS is owned collectively by 63 participating central banks and exists “to support central banks’ pursuit of monetary and financial stability through international cooperation, and to act as a bank for central banks,” according to its statement of purpose.
The BIS’s call for nationally-backed digital currencies adds pressure to activities now underway by the U.S. Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, People’s Bank of China, and other central banks to create and activate digital money.
TRENDPOST: Central banks’ move “from dirty cash to digital trash” is a trend we ranked among our Top Ten Trends at the beginning of 2018. The trend was accelerated by the rise of private digital currencies, which central banks see as a challenge to the sovereignty of national money systems and want to thwart.
Within five years, major central banks will have implemented national digital currencies. And as they go digital, they will pass laws to prohibit competition from the non-regulated crypto world of today.