Dong He, deputy director of the monetary and capital markets department of the IMF, and Yan Liu, Assistant General Counsel at the legal department of the IMF, talk about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs): the current level of interest among central banks in issuing them, what concerns they need to address when designing them, and how commercial banks might be affected, depending on the design of the CBDC. We discuss how privacy could be built into such a currency while also fulfilling anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financial regulations and how a CBDC could affect the IMF’s ability to achieve its goal of financial inclusion. Plus, we also cover how crypto assets being widely adopted could influence economies, as well as Facebook’s Libra.
