Central Bank Digital Currencies: How Will They Work And Could They Kill Crypto
Most people who have heard about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) hate central bank digital currencies. The only people who like central bank digital currencies are the central banks devising them, and maybe a few monetary policy geeks or savvy bulge bracket banks who think they can make a lot of money off them. For now, CBDCs are not for the masses. They don’t really exist, actually, except once in a pilot project in a small region in China. But let’s try and imagine their roll out, and what – if anything – would be the impact on cryptocurrencies that compete with fiat today as a source of wealth accumulation.
“There's clearly huge potential here,” says John Wu, president of Ava Labs, the guys behind the AvalancheAVAX +2% blockchain. “The Fed balance sheet is about $9 trillion today. Even 50 basis points of that moving into CBDC is $45 billion moving into digital; that’s nothing to sneeze at."
