Around 100 Countries Already Exploring Digital Currency, Says IMF MD Amid India's Digital Currency Push

Just ten days after India¡¯s FM Nirmala Sitharaman announced crypto tax and expected roll-out of India¡¯s digital currency by RBI in the upcoming financial year 2022-23, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has rolled out a research paper on digital currencies.

Yesterday (9th February 2022), upon the release of IMF¡¯s paper titled ¡® Behind the Scenes of Central Bank Digital Currency¡¯, Kristalina Georgieva, the Managing Director of IMF said in her speech that around 100 countries are exploring CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currency).

Here's one of the tweets by IMF on the research paper.

Money has evolved far beyond cash and now around 100 countries are exploring how to use central bank digital currencies. At today's #FutureOfEcon event, @KGeorgieva highlighted the key findings of a new IMF analysis. https://t.co/AYUJxaGXe7 pic.twitter.com/goIg5djkNt

¡ª IMF (@IMFNews) February 9, 2022

Still Early Days For CBDCs

In the initial phase of her speech, the IMF MD stated that we have moved beyond conceptual discussions of CBDCs and we are now in the phase of experimentation. Central banks are rolling up their sleeves and familiarizing themselves with the bits and bytes of digital money.

She continued, ¡°These are still early days for CBDCs and we don¡¯t quite know how far and how fast they will go. What we know is that central banks are building capacity to harness new technologies, to be ready for what may lie ahead¡±.

Also Read: Stolen Crypto Funding Behind North Korea¡¯s Nuclear Tests & Missiles Launches: UN Report

The Crypto Worry

As per Georgieva, if CBDCs are designed prudently, they can potentially offer more resilience, more safety, greater availability, and lower costs than private forms of digital money. That is clearly the case when compared to unbacked crypto assets that are inherently volatile.

She said that even the better managed and regulated stablecoins may not be quite a match against a stable and well?designed central bank digital currency.

Also Read: UK Lands Into ¡®Cost Of Living¡¯ Crisis As Inflation Hits 30-Year High

Few Countries Already Distributing Digital Currency

The IMF MD stated in her speech that around 100 countries are exploring CBDCs at one level or another, and some are researching, testing, and a few are already distributing CBDC to the public.

In the Bahamas, the Sand Dollar, which is the local CBDC, has been in circulation for over a year already.

Whereas Sweden¡¯s central bank 'Riksbank' has developed a proof of concept and is exploring the technology and policy implications of CBDC.

And in China, the digital renminbi, called e-CNY, is continuing to progress with more than 100 million individual users and billions of yuan in transactions.

Also Read: Countries Where Cryptocurrency Is Currently Banned

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