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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.