Powell on CBDCs: 'Better to Be Right Than First'
Plus a BIG penalty against a bitcoin mixing service
Happy Monday, Blockfolians
The Lede
There has been a looooot of chatter around central bank digital currencies the last few weeks. Today at a virtual IMF meeting, Fed Chair Jerome Powell was on a panel about cross-border digital payments and basically said the same thing he’s been saying for a while: the US is looking at CBDCs, they create some opportunities but also come with problems, and we’ll see.
The IMF also released a report on CBDCs that said something similar - tamping down expectations of them as some sort of economic panacea:
“Overall, the paper finds that CBDCs do not qualitatively change the economic forces that lead to the international use of currencies, as they are only digital forms of existing fiat currencies but quantitatively, they could reinforce the incentives behind currency substitution and currency internationalization,”
Basically, if you were hoping for some real hot takes, today’s global banker proceedings did not deliver.
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Community Commentary
A seriously good conversation happening in the comments
Oh hello insanely contentious conversation.
A Really Big Number We Should Be Paying Attention To
$60,000,000
That’s the penalty from FinCEN against the former head of a bitcoin mixing service. They are not playing around.
Final Thought
In case you want to go even deeper into this CBDC rabbit hole.