The following is a study of how the digital currencies of central banks may imitate and differ from cryptocurrencies and stablecoin
Digital euros, yuan and dollars?
In view of the growing popularity for Bitcoin cryptocurrency and for on-line payments during the pandemic, central banks are exploring new units themselves.
What do centralized banks do?
The European Central Bank (ECB) has a digital euro to support Germany’s largest European economy, which the Central Bank will secure, providing potentially better protection than commercial banks. It has a strong commitment to the European central bank. The ECB also discussed the option to connect personal payment cards and accounts to a digital euro one day.
Following hearings on Europe’s privacy issues, a final decision is due this year.
Digital euros may be issued and transferred using the blockchain-similar technologies in which cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin depend.
But the ECB has underlined that a digital euros is not a substitute for cash and not a crypto-monetary one. Indeed, the wider cryptocurrency market has swelled to more than US$2 trillion (S$2.6 trillion) 13 years since the emergence of bitcoin and its usage to make payment has yet to start.
And while one bitcoin is worth around US$60,000 today, the ECB has pointed out that one euro must remain one euro. Chinese central banking has been working on a digital currency since 2014. In a number of pilot programs around the world, the Chinese central bank has been exploring the use of a digital yuan.
While mobile and online payments are still commonly used in the country, the digital yuan could allow for greater data and power over payment for the central bank rather than the big-tech giant. Though there has been no official release date announced, China is intended to permit the use of its digital currency for the Beijing Winter Olympics next year by international athletes and tourists.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England, along with the government of the United Kingdom, looks at developing a digital currency for homes and companies to use rather than gold – an idea known as “Britcoin,” Finance Minister Rishi Sunak.
The Federal Reserve investigates a possible cyber dollar in the United States but is progressing slowly to tackle the risks of fraud and counterfeiting.
Cryptocurrency Digital v Cryptocurrency
The issuance, like bitcoin, is subject to an algorithm, not the monetary policy commission of a central bank. The decentralized system guarantees that creators of Bitcoin cannot print new money to boost economic growth, for example.
Simultaneously, central banks hit the extremely speculative cryptocurrencies environment. With regard to the UK initiative, “the British government, as a cryptocurrency investor, will strive to move away from the still-wild western world of payments,” noticed Hargreaves Lansdown, a senior analyst at the stock brokers’ company Susannah Streeter. “The appeal of this decentralized structure still holds crypto in the speculative light,” she said.
What of “stablecoins?”
The ECB is looking for a digital euro, rather than bitcoin, as a result of the challenge from secure coins such as the proposed Diem unit backed up by Facebook. Stablecoins are considered less risky than bitcoins since they are attached to classic units such as the euro and the dollar. If Facebook makes it so that purchases be made in Diem, like WhatsApp, on its social network sites, conventional currencies will suffer.
