SWIFT Planning Launch of New Central Bank Digital Currency Platform in 12-24 Months

Global bank messaging network SWIFT is planning a new platform in the next one to two years to connect the wave of central bank digital currencies now in development to the existing finance system, it has told Reuters. From the report: The move, which would be one of the most significant yet for the nascent CBDC ecosystem given SWIFT's key role in global banking, is likely to be fine-tuned to when the first major ones are launched. Around 90% of the world's central banks are now exploring digital versions of their currencies. Most don't want to be left behind by bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but are grappling with technological complexities.

SWIFT's head of innovation, Nick Kerigan, said its latest trial, which took 6 months and involved a 38-member group of central banks, commercial banks and settlement platforms, had been one of the largest global collaborations on CBDCs and "tokenised" assets to date. It focused on ensuring different countries' CBDCs can all be used together even if built on different underlying technologies, or "protocols", thereby reducing payment system fragmentation risks.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Do you think there is a paper dollar sitting somewhere for every one on the books in every account a bank has?

Gold, paper or bits in memory in a mainframe somewhere all hold the same "value" as one another so long as you are able to exchange one for goods and services.

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Yes, that's why economists use PPP, it doesn't change the concept of currency or the OP's point correct.

Purchasing Power Parity [wikipedia.org]

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[will4]

Pretty much gives the government insight into exactly how and where everyone sends their money. Letting them implement $0.000001 tax on purchases of 'socially unacceptable/sin tax' items. If you want to know where this is going,consider the social credit score in the big asian country. One way to improve your social credit score is to do 'free uncoerced labor' which benefits the government, who also gets to behind smoke and mirrors determine said social credit score.

Just read the risks of Central Bank

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

This isn't what we are talking about.

Re:And everyone should boycott it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Swift? Oh come on. Taylor Swift is getting involved in too much stuff.

Re:

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

Swift? Oh come on. Taylor Swift is getting involved in too much stuff.

Look ... she has to stuff her bra with something, right? Money be just as good as cotton when you as rich as she.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

Secure Wire International Trasfer, nothing to do with som pop diva

Re:And everyone should boycott it.

[Seven Spirals]

Governments want deficit spending. They prefer whatever system allows them to do that with the least amount of accountability. This is the reason for two modern facts. The first is that no country is on a Gold standard anymore. The second is that most governments will not liberalize the definition of legal tender so that they can force folks to accept printed money (again, so they can deficit spend). This is one of the few things the crypto-bros are right about: control the money, control the population. Free the money, free the people (while putting handcuffs on the government). Gresham's law will do the rest

The only exception I can think of is when you've seen dollarization of South American countries. This usually comes after a few hyperinflation episodes the people get beyond sick of (to the point they will vote differently). Dollarization means the government in these places is unable to print the currency on which they operate on and thus the government is unable to deficit spend unless they take on debt the old fashion way (instead of printing money). So, for example, this is why Panama is kicking Columbia and Brazil's ass in these GDP growth stats and others. [cato.org]. Their government cannot deficit spend because they cannot print dollars. In other cases, we've seen Leftist big-spenders try to take power in countries which have dollarized but were unable to deliver their promises of freeshit when they couldn't bankrupt the country to do it. This economist explains it [blogspot.com] rather well. The point is, any constraint on a sovereign's predisposition to make promises with borrowed money is going to run into a lot of static from The Man.

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[Thaelon]

Government isn't the one printing it. Private banks are. Every time they "loan" money they create it out of thin fucking air.

How do you think we have 10 trillion USD in circulation, 90% of which doesn't physically exist?

Yup. Money is a meme

[presidenteloco]

whose value is supported by the "bubble" of sustained collective belief in its value.

Sometimes that belief is related to belief in the value and stability of a particular economy that uses that currency for accounting of its transactions.

Oh and with the amount of lending (of non-existent money), a lot of the belief amounts the belief that most loans will be paid back with future plausible earnings from future activity or future exploited resources.

Sometimes, as in the most popular cryptocurrencies, the beli

Re:

[Seven Spirals]

This is actually no more outlandish a belief than that the shininess and scarcity of gold give it inherent value.

I see this a lot. I take it you're a crypto-fan or that is where I usually see this type of thing be espoused. I guess the fact that gold is malleable and holds it's shape basically forever (unless melted/damaged by force), doesn't oxidize, is used extensively in jewelry, electronics, medicine, dentistry, glass making, aerospace, central-bank vaults, and other areas are inconvenient to the narrative (that's saying nothing of the industrial uses for Silver, Platinum, and Palladium too). I'd suggest trying to

Re:

[Seven Spirals]

Try paying your taxes in magic beans, moron.

Re:

[Seven Spirals]

You mad, Coward? You angry?

Re:

[presidenteloco]

This is what gold is used for (2023):
48.7%: Jewelry
44.57%: Investment (personal hoarding) + Central Banks (national hoarding)
6.69%: Technology
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/299609/gold-demand-by-industry-sector-share/

So roughly 93% of it is demanded for its rare persistent shininess (vanity / social perception of value) and for its rarity alone (the hoarding aspect).
Only 7% of it is demanded for its practical, utilitarian purposes.

Therefore I maintain that its value is primarily a meme-maintain

Re:

[Seven Spirals]

Ah, so now you're crawfishing. Delightful. Tell us more about how gold is a "meme", lol. You're doing great.

Pedantic much?

[presidenteloco]

If 90% of something's value is due (circularly) to maintained shared agreement about its value, that is, essentially, a meme-based value.

So bitcoin value and gold value are 90% derived from a similar source of value. If you don't get why that's significant, that's on you.

I never said gold doesn't have any intrinsic value. What I implied is that whatever that intrinsic, utilitarian derived portion of its monetary value is, it's not that significant relative to its meme-maintained value, so yes, the value of

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[Seven Spirals]

Yes, things are worth what others agree to pay for them. If that's a "meme" to you, uh, okay.

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[presidenteloco]

You continue to miss the point.

When "what others agree to pay for them" is substantially based on mutual awareness that the value has been sustained at this level (or this trend) for some time, and not substantially based on a fair assessment of intrinsic value of the good or service for other purposes, then that price is maintained in a meme-like manner. "Meme" here is meant in the original definition: A self-sustaining information pattern circulating in (and being replicated/sustained in time by) a collec

Re:

[narcc]

Guy who doesn't understand the first thing about how money works modded insightful by other people who don't know the first thing about how money works.

Kindly keep your crypto crackpot nonsense to 4chan and twitter where they belong.

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[Seven Spirals]

Bro, I own ZERO crypto. You communists are terrible guessers.

Re:

[anonymouscoward52236]

SWIFT is doing a centralized token? So they're toying with the idea? This is what, a vaporware announcement? Hahahaha.

What a waste of time and money

[Teun]

When I want to transfer money to anyone with a euro bank account it works nearly instantaneously.
Even a transfer to a EU country with a different currency is fast and reliable so what advantage would there be in a digital copy of my currency?

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[zekica]

CBDC is not a "digital copy" of your currency. It's more like ethereum - one can create apps that run on the blockchain, and the most common application is smart contacts.

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[ISayWeOnlyToBePolite]

The Swedish Riksbank has written papers on issuing currency bypassing banks, the Indian central bank has a test that gets rid of clearing when buying (rolling) government bonds. There are probably more interesting projects but those are two at the top of my head.

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[ceoyoyo]

The EU and other civilized nations have regulations that make banks work together and limits how dickish they can be to their customers. Not every place is so lucky.

SWIFT could use an overhaul though.

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[bn-7bc]

The EU is not a country nation tho.

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[ceoyoyo]

I didn't say it was.

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[Admiral Krunch]

When I want to transfer money to anyone with a euro bank account it works nearly instantaneously.

And when you want to transfer money to anyone without a Euro bank account?

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[Teun]

That's addressed in the next line.
Whereby I can add that this works for any bank account where the bank is a member of SWIFT.
It can be quicker but so far it is fairly seamless.

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[Admiral Krunch]

You're still only comparing to EU banks. Or you were. You've now backpedaled to SWIFT banks.
The new system (still SWIFT) will be quicker and cheaper with more than just EU banks and countries. But it's also somehow a waste of time and money? Maybe for you if you're not the target consumer. Not a waste of time and money for everyone else.

The grand master plan of crypto

[Anonymous Coward]

The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what they want to make you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.

After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.

But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and f

Re:

[geekmux]

nobody is going to bail out your digital magic beans

That entirely depends on how many billionaires lose their magic beans. Hell, taxpayers will end up bailing out those fucking beans. Don’t be so forgetful of the past. Control and manipulation persists regardless of currency.

"TAYLOR"

[DrunkenTerror]

Tokenized Asset-Yield cryptoLoan-Origination Regime

So it's come to this

[cstacy]

CBD Coins, where your money goes up in smoke!

Satire in 3... 2... 1...

[fahrbot-bot]

SWIFT Planning Launch of New Central Bank Digital Currency Platform

Republicans: First politics now international banking. Can't Taylor just stick with singing? :-)

Re:Satire in 3... 2... 1...

[backslashdot]

I don’t like Republicans either, but in thi.. .. you know what, fuck it .. it was Republicans.

12 to 24 months

[backslashdot]

That’s a hell of an estimate. What is it a rocket? They can only launch on a solstice or something like that?

Bye bye privacy

[bradley13]

Modern currencies are already digital. The difference here is that all transactions in these new currencies flow over the central banks. The government has full and complete information on your financial life. The govetment can cut you off in an instant.

This power *will* be abused.

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[Luckyo]

We've already seen what is being copied in this model too during the pandemic. Suddenly every psychopath in power realized that they can have their ultimate dream. Total control over every single individual human being, and masses won't actually fight against it in sufficient numbers to matter, and will be beaten down by their peers.

We're at the "we're doing it and it's a good thing" stage of gaslighting.

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[ForTheVeryLastTime]

Modern currencies aren't digital in the true sense of the word. CBDCs will have some additional properties, allowing the issuer (the Government) to do things like blacklist certain "coins," or specify which kind of transactions a given "coin" may or may not be used for.

Imagine food stamps, except in the form of coins that can't be used to buy anything other than government-approved foodstuffs (bug paste, anyone?). Or imagine the Canadian truckers not having their bank accounts seized, but instead all of the

Re:

[bradley13]

Exactly. All of this. A totalitarian's wet dream.

Also, a wet dream for petty bureaucrats. I, personally, knew a guy in the US (now deceased) whose bank account was periodically drained by the IRS, because he didn't show enough respect for some local official. He'd fight and get his money back; meanwhile his bills went unpaid and his mortgage was overdue. People forget that "government" isn't some nameless, independent authority. It is made up of people, and some of those people are evil.

You mentioned the

Put currency in my hand

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... digital versions of their currencies.

Currency is something I can put in my hand, wallet or phone-pouch: They're not talking about how these digital numbers will be carried. So what will the hardware be and how will security scale as code-breaking technology improves? Will there be a separate PoS device that connects two wallets, or will there be an air-drop/Square for wallets?

Or, is this a fancy EFT?

Kodak trying to sell digital cameras

[khchung]

SWIFT launching CBDC? If they succeed, they die. If they fail, they die.

This is the same dilemma as Kodak in the early days of digital cameras, their main income is film, if their digital cameras succeed, they just killed their main income. If their digital camera failed, they got swept into the dustbin as horse buggy manufacturers as the world moved on to digital cameras without them.

The SWIFT charges on transactions is more atrocious than what VISA & Mastercard charge, they get away with it because

CBDC

[qbast]

CBDC has nothing to do with governments trying to 'keep up' with cryptoshit scam. The problem they are trying to fix is that since transactions moved almost completely online, central banks have much harder time controlling amount of money. Right now only cash is issued by CBs and all online money is created by commercial banks. So CBDC is an attempt to create 'online cash' where once again central banks and not private banks control printing.