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Central banks, cryptocurrencies and complexity

Well, that was fun. I was invited along to take part in the CSFI roundtable on “'Formal' digital cash: The currencies of the future?” along with Ben Dyson from the Bank of England and Hugh Halford-Thompson of BTL Group. The event, held at the London Capital Club, was hugely oversubscribed, which I took to be evidence of renewed City interest in the general topic of digital cash and the specific topic of digital currency.

My good friend Andrew Hilton, long-stanfing captain of the good ship CSFI, framed the discussion in his invitation ask the basic “what if”. "What if some central bank issued a digital coin that was as widely accepted as a bank note? Or, if not a central bank, what if a group of banks or payments operators issued a similar digital coin?”.

For me, the roundtable was both an opportunity to plug my new book (did I mention that I have a new book out by the way?) “Before Babylon, Beyond Bitcoin” and an opportunity to learn in the best possible way: by answering hard questions from smart people.

 

 

xxx

"Such risks could be reduced if central banks offer digital national currencies, which the IMF defines as a 'widely available DLT-based representation of fiat money'."

IMF urges central banks to study digital currencies | afr.com

Now, why the IMF would define digital national currencies is unclear. A national digital currency, or e-fiat for short, may be implemented in any number of different ways. A “widely-available DLT-based representation” would be only one such option and even then it is not entirely clear what “DLT-based” actually means in this context. For that matter, it is not entirely clear what “DLT” means in this context either.

 

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