Although some central bankers have been panicking about their sector’s impotence or complacency in response to the expected dollar stablecoin boom, the Eurosystem has been stepping on the gas for its digital overhaul of wholesale euro settlement projects to embed public money at the heart of tokenisation. The same official expects, as a private opinion, that distributed ledger technology will underpin the majority of finance within 10 years.| OMFIF
For decades, the dollar has been the bedrock of the global financial system. Its liquidity, trust and centrality in trade and capital markets have made it the unrivalled dominant reserve currency. But in today’s fractured geopolitical landscape and evolving macroeconomic environment, that dominance is no longer taken for granted.| OMFIF
No one has been more consistent in denouncing globalists and globalism than President Donald Trump. If ‘tariff’ is the favourite word of his dictionary, ‘globalist’ is his preferred term of abuse.| OMFIF
While G7 central banks continue to agonise over supplementing physical cash with digital money, and in the case of the US, ban the central bank digital currency version outright, India has surged ahead with a mobile-based payments platform accounting for half the world’s real-time payments in 2023.| OMFIF
Pix, launched in November 2020, is Brazil’s most visible success in financial technology. Designed as a public, open instant payments platform, Pix| OMFIF
While unperturbed by the customary condescension from ‘crypto-native’ digital assets disruptors at closed-door meetings, this person instead came away profoundly unsettled from similar gatherings of central bankers discussing the potentially radical implications of the forthcoming Genius Act – the US stablecoin bill expected to become law in 2025. This was put in motion by Donald Trump’s 23 January executive order, which set out for the US to lead the world in blockchain-based finance...| OMFIF
Roughly 1.4bn adults around the world remain unbanked, with the greatest exclusion concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa and southeast Asia. At the same time, sovereign bonds in these regions are often issued in large denominations and dominated by foreign institutional investors, limiting access for local retail investors and exposing governments to significant foreign exchange risk.| OMFIF
