Key facts:
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Kristalina Georgieva says that without a global platform there will be a void that will be filled by bitcoin.
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It recognizes that cryptocurrencies offer the advantage of making cross-border payments.
The president of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, indicated this Monday that the multilateral organization is working on the creation of a global platform for central bank digital currencies (CBDC), which allows the use of these assets for international payments.
so it said Georgieva during a conference held in Rabat, Morocco, this June 19. According to the official, there must be “interoperability” between the countries that will use CBDCs in order to fulfill its international commitments.
The head of the IMF also said that CBDCs “must not be fragmented national propositions”. He points out that they should rather work in unison. This, remembering that several countries have independently advanced in the creation of their own digital currencies.
He also pointed out that, in order to have “more efficient and fair” transactions, digital payment systems capable of connecting countries are needed.
Georgieva said that if a common agreement is not reached for CBDCs that allows for global interoperability, and a common platform for their usability is not created, there will be a vacuum “that would probably be filled by cryptocurrencies”, like bitcoin (BTC). “For this reason, at the IMF, we are working on the concept of a global CBDC platform,” Georgieva exclaimed, according to review Reuters.
A CBDC is a digital currency issued by a central bank, government, or government institution. Like fiat money, it is an asset whose issuance, control and distribution entirely dependent on one state. Therefore, this digital currency is just as susceptible to inflation and censorship as its physical version.
Instead, bitcoin is decentralized money by which countries, people, and companies conduct international transactions. Also safely and privately, but without the intersection of any organismsince it is an asset whose technology based on block chains is inviolable.
Several countries advance their platforms for CBDCs
The announcement of the head of the IMF, about the work on the creation of a global platform of CBDCcomes at a time when there are already initiatives focused on this.
One of them is promoted by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which has been carrying out tests on platforms for several months for the usability of CBDCs.
As CriptoNoticias reported in March of this year, the BIS successfully tested a system to send remittances with CBDC. It was a pilot test in which they evaluated the shipment of these coins internationally.
Another similar example of tools for CBDCs is that of Ripple Labs, the company behind the Ripple (XRP) cryptocurrency of the same name. This company launched the Ripple CBDC platform last month, with which they intend to support governments, central banks and government institutions in the issuance, distribution and use of their digital currencies.
This platform will begin to be used by the Colombian government, in Latin America, as part of their experiments with blockchain technology.
The Bank of the Republic of Colombia and the Ministry of Communication and Information Technologies, partnered with Ripple Labs to use the platform and improve your payment system. To do this, they will carry out a series of tests, as this medium reported in recent days.