The World Economic Forum (WEF) declared in a report titled “Modernizing Financial Markets with Wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (wCBDC)” that at least 98% of the “global economy’s central banks are researching, experimenting, piloting or deploying central bank digital currency (CBDC) to determine how to modernize the capabilities of and improve access to central bank money (CeBM).”
The WEF noted that 24 CBDCs are expected to be active by 2030.
“CeBM is ideal for systemically important transactions despite the emergence of alternative payment instruments,” the report said. “Wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) is a form of CeBM that could unlock new economic models and integration points that are not possible today.”
“Wholesale” CBDCs would be used by banking companies and governments, whereas “retail” CBDCs are for the public.
The “intention” behind digital currency is to “introduce a fully digitized securities system that is future-proofed for incremental adoption of DLT,” or distributed ledger technology.
Assets would undergo “tokenization,” meaning that “digital tokens representing underlying assets like real estate, equities, digital art, intellectual property and even cash” would be used.
One way the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) would pursue “tokenization” is through the creation of “interlinking systems.”
The U.S. Federal Reserve shared with Congress in March that one of its “key duties” is to establish a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
GOP Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) shared the information on X, writing, “If you don’t think the Fed is pursuing a CBDC, think again.”
“The Fed gave this to my staff during a presentation earlier this Congress. They view a CBDC as one of their KEY DUTIES.”
Last year, it was announced that the European Union (EU) was in its final stage of the investigation phase for the digital euro project.
“We are now entering the final stage of the investigation phase of the project. The ECB’s Governing Council recently endorsed a third set of design options for the digital euro–design options that we have also discussed in previous hearings. Today we are thus publishing a report setting out the Eurosystem’s views on how people could access, hold and start to use the digital euro,” Fabio Panetta, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, said at the time.
“In a modern economy, being able to pay digitally is a basic need for people,” he declared. “With cash, central banks already provide a means of payment that is risk-free, widely accessible and easy to use, and that leaves no-one behind. But the rapid digitalisation of our economies requires us to complement cash with its evolution in the digital sphere: a digital euro.”
