The good is not all that good, the bad is very bad, and the ugly is extremely ugly. From Alasdair Macleod at goldmoney.com:
There has been much comment over the likelihood that central bank digital currencies will be introduced. I conclude they are unnecessary — a red herring. But it does allow us to discuss their possible relevance to a new Asian super-currency.
Earlier this month, the Bank of England in partnership with the UK Treasury produced a white paper on the subject, which waters down the objectives identified by the Bank for International Settlements considerably. The British proposal is a bad idea because it is pointless and I explain why.
In this article, I describe how a new gold-backed currency can do away with the US dollar for trade settlements and commodity purchases entirely between participating nations in the Russia China axis. Some informed commentary on the topic suggests that a blockchain will be involved, and Sberbank, the Russian state-owned lender has already issued a gold-linked fund designed to be available to the public by being compatible with ethereum. Perhaps it is front-running developments…
The ugly side in our title is found in the BIS’s dystopian proposals, which sees CBDCs as an opportunity to allow central banks to double down on their attempts to manage economic outcomes while restricting personal freedom.
Messing about with fiat currency alternatives such as CBDCs could end up revealing the formers’ fragility. CBDCs will take years to implement in any major currency anyway, during which fiat currencies led by the dollar are likely to fail anyway.
Introduction
It is not clear what encouraged central banks to think about introducing their own digital currencies, other than possibly a feeling that if they didn’t do something, then private sector money could threaten their monopoly.
Initially, bitcoin was touted as sound money with a hard stop of 21,000,000 coins and proof of ownership recorded on a blockchain. Bitcoin’s strength was to be the opposite of fiat currency weakness, whose expansion is the primary means by which a central bank stimulates an economy. But if central banks think that bitcoin could overturn fiat currencies, they merely exposed their own ignorance about the nature of money and credit.
STRAIGHT LINE LOGIC 