Bitcoin Forum

I've heard about some countries beginning the development of a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). With crypto/Blockchain tech becoming extremely popular since the start of the pandemic a year ago, we'll be heading to a new era where paper money will cease to exist. Crypto still has some challenges to overcome (like scalability, fungibility, and volatility). This will not be a problem with CBDCs as they will be manipulated by governments and central banks to a greater extent than today's Fiat currencies. All it takes is for central banks to copy Bitcoin's (or Ethereum's) code to start their own digital currencies for the whole world to use.

Now, the real deal would be getting people to adopt a new kind of money when they're used to paper money and credit/debit cards. Not everyone is quite fond with crypto/Blockchain tech these days. Third-world countries will be the ones left behind as they lack the infrastructure necessary to make CBDCs a reality. How fast will it take for the whole world to switch to CBDCs is beyond me. Time is moving fast during the COVID-19 pandemic, but there's no indication of a CBDC launching soon.

I wonder how long will it take for CBDCs to become a reality? Will it be decades or centuries from now? Do you think it's still too early for CBDCs to come into fruition? If not, why? What may be the cause for delaying the launch of the new digital Fiat system? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. :)

There are no articles about Digital Dollar going to launch soon but everyone knew that Chinese CBDC is already up and running to several cities in China. If there is a chance for governments to look into what they are doing, they could start going there to look into it.

There are probably more countries that will likely adopt CBDC than Bukele had done. But I'm sure it will take some time, maybe a decade before all countries will have their own CBDC. They can't hastily shift to CBDC because there will be lots of people gonna be left behind. China gradually did it too to different cities.

It's closer than we think, for example Digital Yuan, the roadmap is around 2023-2025. And currently, they are already doing some testing on some Chinese problems to see how viable it is and look for loopholes and problems that might arises in the future. And I would say that the USD power is diminishing, and if it continue it's path in the next coming years, maybe CBCD released is hurried up because of this one. And I think China will lead the race again, they have this "Belt & Road portal Silk Road" program and now that they have banned bitcoin, the paths are clear for them to have their Digital Yuan.

What makes you think that crypto became more popular because of the pandemic? And people didn't ditch cash still, because it has been shown that it isn't playing any significant role in covid-19 transmission.

CBDCs are competitors to Visa and Mastercard and PayPal and all the other smaller companies. They are essentially the same thing, but government-owned and based on crypto technology because of the hype. But if user experience will be poor - i.e. high fees or long confirmation times, bugs, lost tranactions etc., than there will be no adoption, simple as that.

We still don’t know if the central bank’s digital currency can emerge as a beautiful butterfly, but many countries have made substantial breakthroughs, including France, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Turkey, Bahamas, Barbados, Uruguay, etc. At present, in China, there are already 6 cities as pilots to run the central bank's digital currency, and experiments are conducted on many university campuses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_renminbi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_renminbi)


https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/chinas-digital-yuan-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work.html (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/chinas-digital-yuan-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work.html)

I think the central bank's digital currency will develop more perfect in 2-3 years, and maybe even ahead of schedule, especially in some countries like France, the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Russia, and China.

You might see the major credit card transaction companies begin to dabble in CBDC's in coordination with the big banks because the market's there -- it's a giant pain spending your own local currency across boarders, and you end up eating away a lot in conversion fees in case you go to a currency exchange. As far as adoption, meh, don't see it happening any time soon. People are afraid of crypto/blockchains, even if a big financial institution is supporting it with centralization.

I do not expect that the adoption of a digital currency project managed by governments will occur now, which will render all commercial banks useless, and therefore the existing economy today needs a real change in one of the most important arteries, which is commercial banks.
Some events, such as the Corona pandemic, will speed things up, but I think that a lot of opposition to such a project, as the first and last beneficiary of it is governments and individuals.

There are only a few countries who are in active R&D on CBDCs currently, and even those who are expected to bring immediate results have been struggling with realizing their goals with it. I don't expect to see CBDCs come into fruition in the next 5 years, as countries still have a lot on their plate from the recovery on COVID-19 and I don't think CBDCs will be their top priority. A transition towards a digital economy with the help of credit and debit cards however may come first, but ditching physical currencies in favor of CBDCs are, in the near future, still highly improbable.

Its not a butterfly. But yes, it does have the features of a similar being that waits inside a cocoon to burst out of the host and take its true form. The movie Alien comes to mind if you want to know what CBDCs are.

It can be taken for granted that CBDCs will be a reality sometime in the future. But this doesn't really make any difference to government and corporations that are already operating on by-wire money transactions. CBDC are meant for the common people. From what that BIS abomination was saying a few days back, it seems they really just want to have a track of what are you spending, where are you spending and how much of it is tax.

Coupled with targeted profiling for advertisement, this I think will be the end of creativity and freedom in human society as we have known it since the last century. Connecting every person to a database and then having them spend from a pool of constantly tracked and monitored numbers on a centralized database is as far removed from humanity as one can imagine. I fail to understand how people can even consider this as a "technology". This is just outright control and slavery. This is why Bitcoin is all the more important. It'd be stupid if we all just end up using CBDCs.

I for one would NEVER use it.

Many states are now considering issuing their own central bank stablecoins. This process is not so fast and takes at least several years, because finance does not like haste, and digital money is a completely new phenomenon. This process can accelerate significantly if the first states to introduce a digitized currency in their country achieve some success. Especially in this, China can surpass with its digitized yuan. If this happens, then the release of their digitized currency of states will simply be massive. This process can greatly affect the development and the cryptocurrency market in the future.

This is not true, to the best of my knowledge there'll never be such an era were paper money will become obsolete, even with CBDC's or dex crypto, fiat currencies will still be in circulation, and will be used more than any other form of currency, countries are not working on CBDC's to eliminate the use of paper money, many of them are erroneously using it to compete with Bitcoin, cause they do not understand that Bitcoin is decentralized and works in a pretty different way.
I think CBDC's will be manipulated just the same way the government does with fiat currencies, they can print and distribute it just as they like, and that will be the exact case with CBDC's, and that's why many governments are going for it, it's all about the same exact control that the government is obsessed with.
It'd definitely not take centuries, except prolly for underdeveloped countries, for developed countries it wouldn't take too long from now, we should be expecting the digital Yuan and dollar to be in use sooner rather than later, what you should understand is that it can't be used as much as fiat currencies, the government could make it's use compulsory on some sort of national payments or something of that sort, to somewhat encourage people to use it, but generally, it's use wouldn't be too widespread.

Well, it's already testing in other countries afaik, especially in China. Though it's still debatable whether other countries would actually follow, at the very least, there have been baby steps from other countries starting up the adoption. Tbh without an actual sample of sorts of what CBDC would like, it's hard to determine whether citizens would actually accept it or not. If it's just fiat hidden behind their "innovation" to make it as CBDC, then it wouldn't actually take that long tbh, since the framework has been set since long ago already. I'd reckon half a century or so as the maximum time needed?

There would be no point in centralized by CBDCs digital currencies because the main advantage of cryptocurrencies will be lost. I personally think that what the Chinese government is doing to their people is a crime, because they're leaving people no choice, everything will be tracked. After the imposure of a ban on crypto, fiat was their only way to be out of sight, and now they're about to ban it too.

China is very close to that. Many people have already received e-CNY presents in order to spend them fast and see that the system works.


As long as internet is not available on each and every square inch of Earth, no, paper money will still exist for quite a while...


CBDCs are not necessarily blockchain based currencies. Most probably not blockchain at all.
And the people don't actually care. If there's getting developed a simple way to spend the "new money", people won't care about the underlying tech.
And I don't think that's too difficult or expensive to develop PoS (point of sale) equivalents for "the new money" as soon as there will be demand for them.

Paper money will not become obsolete but it will become less used in time and the more digital money will be used, the more paper money might move to the underground markets.  There is a very strong attempt to create this idea in people's brains that digital is safer, paper is not.  They tried using the pandemic safety measures to push this into our brain and we definitely see an impact only one year later.

They said we should get rid of the old.  They called for backdoors in social media, smartphones, open source apps etc.  They want to make privacy seem a crime.  They are everywhere, they are manipulating us all through so many channels and most of us take the bait.  They are surely looking for a way to eliminate paper money and CBDCs are the best solution for them.

In the meantime however, they will meet a few barriers they might not be able to pass.  One such barrier is our grandparents and parents.  They are the hardest to accommodate to new technologies.  In fact, many of them barely have any idea how credit cards work.  Newborn children have access to technology since day one, which makes it an easy transition within the next few decades from paper to digital.

And instead of printing money, they will mint it and make it vanish within a single click.  There is nothing more tempting for a Surveillance State than a CBDC is.  Manipulation will be easier than ever before.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

El Salvador is getting hard time to get people used to use bitcoin. According to a survey by pollster Disruptiva, about 65% people don't want to use cryptocurrency. Out of the 1233 people surveyed, only approx. 20% people think that cryptocurrency adoption is good while others think that it’s not a good decision.
Source- https://gadgets.ndtv.com/cryptocurrency/news/bitcoin-price-cryptocurrency-poll-citizens-sceptical-cryptocurrency-standard-legal-tender-2482679
Nevertheless, this is the start. People need to be more educated, while the procedure must be made more easier so that, it totally works as the current mobile banking system. That would attract people using cryptocurrency.

What the government wants us to think is that "they would be very similar to cryptocurrencies and could also replace them" but at the same time I do think that people understand for a fact that cryptocurrencies as a whole are way different as compared to what these new series of Fiat are trying to achieve. I do think that in countries where they have been going on about trying to ban bitcoins they are already one step ahead and are preparing to launch the digital currencies in the time being. At the same time their actions are being halted because of pandemic. When we talk about countries like El Salvador I do think that they would not go too much in with the crypto business.
What we do need to do is state out the fact that "these central bank currencies are no way similar to cryptocurrencies" as much as we can to generate the general awareness.

What are your reasons as to why you think the following information is true or will happen, my argument isn't based on the fact that digital currencies wouldn't be popular as the years roll by, but I don't think it'd get to the stage of drastically reducing the use and demand for paper money. I mean, the government control both paper money and their CBDC's, they will simply both be used, but imo, paper money will definitely be used more. I think you're missing the concept, when it's Bitcoin or dex currencies in question, that's when the government usually promotes their erroneous ideology that their CBDC's would actually be safer to use, whilst Bitcoin isn't; but between CBDC's and the same country's fiat currencies, they'll both be promoted by the country as being great to use.

CDBC will take a long long time to become a reality, first implementation would be just backend, like you won't be able to use CDBC but the banks will exchange their money in form of blockchain and slowly it will be brought to retail customers, but don't expect paper notes to be eliminated anytime soon, I think they will float around together with CDBC for sometime, also CDBC unlike the expectations of most of the people aren't going to be so transparent and decentralized, the Supply could still be controlled by government.

Its simply a digital fiat nothingless and i dont really see for fiat to be replaced anytime soon no matter what because as long government do exist then expect that fiat would remain forever.

For sure these CBDC's would be centralized which is really total opposite on decentralized crypto projects and actually there are already some had made their own

but whats the difference? Nothing right?

I think that we will see CBDCs becoming a reality in a 5 or 10-year period the most. Governments are doing a deep research about CBDCs now. They want to make sure that they won't be in loss if they develop these currencies. After the end of these researches, things will continue faster.

i think a much more interesting question would be how long will the CBDCs survive for?

there has already been a couple of them created and some are actively being worked on. and we know that those who were released (like Petrol) are massively ignored by people.
like any centralized altcoins they will have a lifespan and they will run out of air. some will be hyped more and last more of course but i think the bigger the country's economy and the bigger the hype the more it can survive. but in my opinion their doom is practically guaranteed.

In all likelihood, China is going to be the first with a digital currency, and it's about nothing more than exerting unimaginable control over the economy and political opposition.  Imagine a tool like a digital currency in the hands of a totalitarian state like China, where the Communist Party can instantly delete the savings of political opponents to cripple them.  The threat of such a tool would be used to keep future opposition from speaking out against the party as well.  It's absolutely terrifying.

Well look, they will probably survive where people will be forced to use them, because they will have no other choice, as is the case in China where the government does not ask you if you want something or not. In the EU, of course, the situation is somewhat different, but I have no doubt that many will accept this solution if it is promoted in an attractive way and if countries like Germany and France are committed to it.

No matter what anyone thinks about it, advances in society and technology dictate that finances evolve in line with the digital age, and today everyone wants everything to be available to them at the click of a button - so it's not hard to realize this idea, everything the average person needs is a smartphone and digital wallet.

What fascinates me is that someone thinks that this is something that will compete with Bitcoin, and everything that is centralized is just the complete opposite of that idea - no matter what it's called.

For countries like China, it is not difficult to implement CBDCs because they have good communication and transmission equipment.and better infrastructure necessary .The government has strong control and promotion capabilities.They may need a short time like 1year or two years.But not all countries like China nowdays.

Most of the big companies like paypal, visa or master they have directions to cooperate with CBDC banks, most of the countries they have their own CBDC central banks and they hope that in the next 5 years they will take it in the direction of development, speeding up progress for countries that are researching CBDCs, but if a CBDC bank is born, the beneficiaries are not us but the bankers and specific individuals somehow.

Multiple central banks are researching about CBDC and how they can successfully launch and you do not need a decade to see countries coming up with their digital fiat currencies, my expectation is that by the time of the next Bitcoin rally we might see the launch of CBDC by multiple major economies and that might drive the price of Bitcoin higher, hopefully that will be the fact  :D.

It looks like China's Digital Yuan is close to launch. I haven't heard about other countries' progress so far. There have been talks about a US Digital Dollar, but there hasn't been any indication of its development whatsoever. A decade from now would be a more realistic timeframe for the launch of CBDCs worldwide. There's so much to learn and so much to work on before CBDCs become mature enough for mainstream use. After all, Blockchain technology is still in its infancy.

The real issue is not launching a CBDC, but rather making people use it on top of paper money and credit/debit cards. Not everyone is quite fond using crypto/Blockchain tech. Similarly, not everyone has a smartphone or Internet access. As long as these limitations exist, it'll be quite challenging for CBDCs to gain traction in the mainstream world. We'll get there, but it'll take a lot more time than what's been previously imagined. Just my opinion :)

I don't know why you believe if many countries start to launch CBDC's it'll drive the price of Bitcoin up, it  very well can, though that's not what this countries want or even think, if you take a closer look at most of the campaign for CBDC's you'd understand that they are more or less thought of as a competition to Bitcoin and other dex crypto, they want to produce a digital currency for their citizens and thus encourage, or rather force them to use it and not Bitcoin.

In my opinion, China's latest sanction/ban on Bitcoin (mining) is as a result of their CBDC's which is more or less already slowly in use, through dictatorial policies, government wants to control everything, especially finance, with Bitcoin they cannot, but through CBDC's, they easily can, I'm expecting more hostilities from different governments directed at Bitcoin, it could affect the network in the short period, but it wouldn't in the long term.

On the contrary, I don't think it will drive the price of bitcoin. You see, CBCD is government back crypto (well I don't see them as crypto though), just the same as fiat but in digital form. Bitcoin is different, obviously, and if ever you can invest on CBCD, which I doubt the government will allow, still far from bitcoin because it's centralised and all that stuff.

As others have said, China is close to roll out in the next couple of years. So let's see how it goes. But we can't use them as benchmark regardless if it is going to be successful or not, because we all know that the Chinese can't do anything but to follow their government. They are going to be forced to use it no matter what.

I dont't think CBDC's will have that big of an impact on the development of cryptocurrencies. Especially bitcoin.

Of course CBDC's will have their uses, but they do not align with the ideals of bitcoin and will not hinder its progress. A CBDC is fundamentally different from bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies.

I feel like it is going to be another decade before it really settles down. I am not saying that there won't be anything by that time, there will be some CBDC by that time but in 10 years we are going to see them as something very big and that is when we will know that they are used a lot as well.

These things take time because of all the paperwork that has to be done, and governments are very slow to do these things and that is why I believe even if we have something  valid in 2-3 years that still doesn't mean that it will be widespread and there will be regulations so so bad that it will take at least 10 years for them to be common. However if it is just "when will a CBDC used in crypto" then I am sure that it will be just 2-3 years before we see one really taking it up, but it is still not going to be something that everyone will be using neither.

Hasn't it already become a reality? I believe PBOC has already started a trial run of digital Yuan in Beijing and surrounding cities.  See a very recent article from Bloomberg,

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-08/china-s-digital-yuan-trial-expands-to-10-million-eligible-users

So while some other countries are still unsure about its planning and implementation, China has started distributing it among their chosen citizens.

One thing I can be sure of is that if this is indeed legitimate, it will surely be a big hit by the time it launches and will be able to gather millions of investment funds if not millions as  soon as it announces its plans to operate. I can only see great things happening for this kind of innovative solutions that really solve existing problems. Just imagine how big of a help it would be for crypto enthusiasts and the crypto industry as a whole when you can be able to just walk in without the need of using dex or vpn to do peer to peer trading just so you can convert fiat to crypto and vise versa. The only problem I can see about this is the fact that it does not align with what the ideals of most crypto currencies specifically bitcoin. Still though, some are just investors so I do not think that it will be a huge problem unless governments start using the info to issue exaggerated taxes or confiscate funds out of the blue. That's just scary.

It is possible they're waiting for a big economic crash to rollout CBDC. If people are desperate and have no other options. They may be willing to accept CBDC's with very restrictive and unfair terms.

China's initial CBDC blueprint contained plans for a digital currency with an expiration date so it couldn't be used for long term savings. There have also been recent discussions about whether central banks should limit which retailers and products consumers are allowed to spend digital currencies on. The general trend appears headed in an increasingly restrictive and regulated direction.

Every crisis in recent history has come with added restrictions and red tape. It doesn't necessarily take a Sherlock Holmes to guess another crisis could be exactly what central bank CBDC are waiting for.

I think it's already a reality for the people of China, they have been dabbling with this CBDC thing for a little while now and I think that the only thing left to do is for them to finally launch it so the public can finally use it. It won't take a long time for CBDC to be a reality because there are existing cryptocurrency that they can just copy if they want to make their CBDC.

I agree that fiat money now means power, because a specific state acts as regulators

For a long time, figures have been cited that now about 80 percent of all states are conducting research on the introduction of digitized currencies into their economies, which are called stable coins of the central banks of these states.
Financial issues and the introduction of new types of means of payment do not tolerate errors. Although the United States and the countries of the European Union have already noted their lag on this issue from China, which for several years has overtaken other countries in terms of their implementation, and therefore will have an advantage in this matter. Therefore, they are trying to accelerate the implementation of CBDC. I think that over the next few years, CBDCs will appear en masse in many states.

I don't have any issues in central banks introducing their CBDCs. My issue is that since the CBDCs are inferior to existing set of cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, the government may try to scuttle the competition by banning the latter category of currencies. And this has already happened in countries such as China and Vietnam. Now something like this happening in democratic countries is low, but still we can't completely rule out such a possibility. Any such measure can make the lives of ordinary cryptocurrency users more difficult.

It seems that China is advancing at a very fast pace. The trial run of its own CBDC shows us that the world is close to experiencing a full-fledged cashless society. While China is almost ready to launch the final version of the Digital Yuan, other powerful countries are lacking behind. The United States hasn't shown any indication of launching a "Digital Dollar" to the public. Development for a CBDC backed by the Federal Reserve hasn't even started yet. Since it's still the early days of CBDCs, it'll take decades from now before the whole world ditches paper money for good. I wouldn't worry about how long a CBDC will take to become a reality in my country as long as decentralized cryptocurrencies exist. Just my thoughts ;D

In the case of the Central European Bank, it is already being tested, so if successful it will be a question of a year or two. There are still quite a few concerns that need to be addressed for adoption and there are quite a few derivatives for traditional banking and possibly for the unbanked of the world along with additional anti-laundering that would need to be looked into, but technically it looks like done at this point. I published a few posts on that, if you want to look for them in my history.