Nearly two-thirds of the countries in the world are now “exploring” central bank digital currencies (CBDC) at one level or another, according to a new report.
The report, published on June 28 by Washington-based think tank Atlantic Council, revealed that a total of 130 countries—representing 98 percent of the global economy—are taking steps to convert their central bank money into digital form. That’s a dramatic increase from two years ago, when there were just 35 countries considering a CBDC.
Some 11 of those 130 countries have already launched their CBDCs. All of them, except Nigeria, are Caribbean island nations.
All G-20 countries, with the exception of Argentina, are now in the advanced stage of CBDC development.
Russia, amid what it calls a special military operation against Ukraine, announced that it would launch a digital ruble pilot in April. The pilot has been pushed to roughly the end of July, as the Russian parliament keeps adding amendments to the legislature that would authorize the Russian Central Bank to create the program.
The European Central Bank is on track to begin piloting the digital euro, eyeing a potential launch in 2028. India and Brazil are also planning to launch their digital currencies next year.
In the United States, the work on a retail CBDC has “stalled,” although progress is still “moving forward” for a wholesale CBDC, which can only be used by financial institutions for bank-to-bank transfers.
The idea of a Federal Reserve-issued and -controlled digital U.S. dollar has met with intense opposition from people on both the political right and center-left, such as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s challenging U.S. President Joe Biden for the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.
“Central bank digital currencies are the beginning of the end,” Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican, wrote on Twitter in April.
Kennedy offered a look back at the Canadian truckers’ anti-COVID vaccine mandate protests in 2022, to which the Canadian government responded by locking the bank accounts of the protesters and people donating to the cause. Adopting a CBDC would only make it easier for a government to punish those it deems politically undesirable using financial means, he argued.
“It’s not outlandish to imagine that even here in America, your bank account could one day be frozen because of your politics, or comments you’ve made on social media,” he wrote on Twitter in May.
“This is not a right- or left-wing issue. It is about protecting democracy from powerful established interests. The digitization of currency has given government unprecedented powers to surveil and control economic life. That is why I oppose CBDCs, which will vastly magnify the government’s power to suffocate dissent by cutting off access to funds with a keystroke.”
In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a law that expressly bans the use of Fed-issued digital currency in his state. He also called on like-minded states to join Florida in adding similar prohibitions to their respective commercial laws to fight back against this concept nationwide.
“A centralized digital dollar ... will stifle innovation and promote government-sanctioned surveillance,” DeSantis said in March, when he had yet to announce a 2024 White House bid. “Florida will not side with economic central planners; we will not adopt policies that threaten personal economic freedom and security.”
