Hi guys, this is my opinion on why Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) is a coming to a phone in your pocket.
in February 2022, CBK issued a notice that very few people took notice of and worse even still, the meat wrappers have not even a clue of what is happening. CBK asked for public participation on the idea of issuance of CBDC to be submitted in writing by “Friday May 20, 2022 at 5.00 pm.”
and since no Kenyan is interested in the nitty gritty of CBK apart from the hiring of the CBK Governor, and the steady decrease of the Ksh, all of Kenya failed to notice it. What followed is a classic document that was handed down from above and the document that was presented there after was a local copy of the American quest for CBDC which has a strong borrowing from the operations of Ripple a strong contendor in the quest to roll out CBDCs. https://www.centralbank.go.ke/2022/02/10/discussion-paper-on-central-bank-digital-currency/
Since the inception of M-pesa, we have slowly but steadily been going digital its only that we have been unaware of it. 95% of my transactions are digital at the moment. This has not gone unnoticed (not my digital acceptance of course) and when Facebook wanted to introduce their coin LIBRA, Mark Zuckerbarg (sic) came to Kenya but of course we all thought he came for the tilapia he was served.
Kenya last week negotiated to get oil on credit for a few months, we negotiated to have Pakistan take black tea in batter trade for rice, while most see it as poor man posturing, I see it as the de-dolarisation of Kenyan trade. what would happen is that Kenya would buy products it needs in ksh but is paid to the recepient iin their local currency. this is a hallmark of a CBDC through use of a bridge asset which i am not sure what it would be but it sure isn’t the dollar.
on the world scene, India will be rolling out their CBDC before June 2023, Australia will be doing so sometime this year, and ofcourse, we have to look at the shit show that Nigeria tried to pull by limiting cash withdrawals in favour of going digital.
Apologies for the rant and for it being all over the place I am no writer
Nice writeup! Could it be the reason why SEC and other US govt agencies are fighting stable coins like BUSD & USDT? I think USDC has a better chance of becoming the US official CBDC.
I was part of a team at my former employer which drafted the initial concept note on this…but the discussion paper had been refined after going through several itrerations. Will be interesting to see where this goes.
Utanunua wapi na utauza wapi? I follow commodity markets more than the average person…in the past month Gold has fallen 3.1% meaning ungekuwa umebuy Gold ya 1 Million saa hii ingekuwa less 31k. Kwa hii forum I usually see people shout Gold, Silver or Bonds when mtu anauliza investment advise nacheka tu. Anayway, wewe maybe unasema kubuy Gold for another reason.