The International Monetary Fund (IMF) considers that central banks can issue digital currencies in the future, according to an IMF report of June 27.
According to the full document, the IMF and the World Bank conducted a fintech survey that requested responses from financial institutions of all member countries, and based its conclusions on part of the 96 responses received.
According to the document, several central banks of different countries are considering the possibility of implementing some type of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Reportedly, Uruguay has already launched a CBDC pilot program, while the Bahamas, China, the Eastern Caribbean Monetary Union, Sweden and Ukraine are ready to test their systems.
In addition, it is reported that several central banks have been conducting research on the potential impact of CBDCs on financial stability, the structure of the banking sector, the entry of non-banking financial institutions and the transmission of monetary policy.
Both emerging and the developed economies are considering CBDC
The motivation to offer a CBDC varies, according to the report. It is said that both the emerging economies and the developed economies are considering the options of the CBDC, and that the latter tries to offer an alternative to cash as its frequency of use decreases. For the emerging economies of developing countries, on the other hand, the main result of a CBDC would be the reduction of bank costs, as well as the possibility that banks are more available to unbanked citizens.
One similarity, however, is that most central banks are not interested in issuing a completely anonymous CBDC, since the institutions want transactions to be ultimately tracked by the authorities when necessary. However, some of these institutions are considering the possibility of dividing a subset of reserved tokens for large possessions and transactions, and making them verifiable.
As Cointelegraph has already reported, conservative economist Stephen Moore has recently joined a project to create an entity similar to the Federal Reserve for cryptocurrencies. The project, Decentral, is an alleged attempt to regulate the supply of cryptocurrencies in order to reduce volatility in the crypt market.
Also published on Medium.