Weekly Geopolitical Report – The Geopolitics of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC): Part III (March 29, 2021)
by Bill O’Grady | PDF
(Due to the Easter holiday, the next report will be published on April 12.)
This week, we continue our series with an examination of the geopolitics of CBDC.
The Geopolitics
As we noted in Part I, there has been strong interest among the central banks to introduce digital currencies. We would expect each country that decides to establish a CBDC regime will do so based on its domestic situation. But these new currencies won’t exist in a vacuum; the establishment of CBDC in one country will likely affect what occurs in other nations as well.
Therefore, this week’s report examines the likely structure of CBDC in the U.S., China, and the Eurozone. We will project what a CBDC will look like in each region by establishing the priorities of each one, a likely CBDC structure based on those priorities, and current progress. Obviously, the world is more than these three entities, but for our purposes, the introduction of CBDC by these three powers will tend to determine what other nations decide on this issue.