There are a number of countries around the world that are in the process of deploying or testing tokenized national currencies, in both blockchain technology systems and other formats. These initiatives are often talked about in the context of digitizing the money supply, but this is misleading. More than 90% of all money is already digital, with only about 10% of the money in most industrial countries taking the form of physical cash.
Not only is most money already digital, but most payments are as well – processed by bank transfers, credit cards, debit cards and other services. Indeed, central banks are making enormous investments in further accelerating and streamlining the digital payment process, an endeavor that is entirely independent of approaches to tokenization or blockchains.
Paul Brody is EY’s global innovation leader for blockchain and a CoinDesk columnist.
In the U.S., the Federal Reserve will shortly be releasing a new solution – FedNow – that will support near real-time digital payments nationally. In doing so, the Fed will join a number of other countries that have also built and deployed similar infrastructure, including the U.K., Australia, Mexico and Nigeria.
So, if most money and payments are already digital and many governments are investing in even faster real-time payments systems, then what is the value of blockchain-style tokenization?
Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-cbdcs-really-game-changing-162450566.html
