EOTO #2 Response

CBDC

I enjoyed every group's EOTO presentation but one of the concepts that I found interesting during the EOTO presentation, was the presentation about CBDC which is something I don't really know anything about, that is why I found it so interesting.  CBDC is short for Central Bank Digital Currency. CBDC is an electronic CB money that can be acquired more broadly than reserves. It is basically Bitcoin controlled by the government. A prime example of where CBDC is used is China it is a very controversial concept because just like anything else in this world CBDC has a lot of pros and cons.

Some of the pros of CBDC are that it could push us toward a cash-free society, which would be great for the environment, interest rates could improve, and the regulation of payment systems could improve. But there are also a lot of cons when it comes to CBDC and some of those are that government can access your money so you have less privacy when it comes to your money and another con is that commercial and private banks can be affected due digital currency. Other countries also use CBDC and some of those countries are Russia, India, and the Bahamas, with China becoming the world's first-ever large economy that tests a digital currency. This is why everyone uses China as an example when talking about CBDC. But more countries hope to follow moving to a cashless future. Another thing that I learned was how CBDC could potentially improve our day-to-day life which is something that isn't really talked about that much because whenever anyone thinks of CBDC they think of China and automatically tie it to communism. CBDC could make life easier and simpler because you wouldn't have to worry about cash anymore and it would improve cross-border payments. If we go to a CBDC future then that means major tech companies would be in charge of keeping our financial data safe and they have proved in the past that some of them have horrible security.