One missed opportunity is that the digital dollar doesn’t seem to circumvent the need for a private bank account. We currently have to have those in order to participate in the payment processing system that the private banks partially underpin. In a digital dollar system, there isn’t a fundamental need for the private banks to act as intermediaries between Canadians and the BoC. If the digital dollar allowed this, then the private banks would have to offer additional value for depositing money with them, besides access to the payment processing system. Alas, last time I checked, that wasn’t the case. It is a Canadian tradition to not endanger the revenue streams of our big corporate darlings. Which isn’t totally lost on me, given how many people they employ. 🤷
This is the first I’ve heard of plans for a digital currency in Canada. Do you have a link?
First I heard too, I found this from the Bank of Canada.
tl;dr Its not crypto and they don’t have immediate plans to implement it, but they’re exploring the idea and just completed a public consultation on it.
What is a digital Canadian dollar? Simply put, a digital Canadian dollar would be a digital form of the cash in your wallet. Like cash, it could buy the things you need. But the advantage is that you could also use it for online purchases and to transfer money between family and friends. And businesses could use it to pay each other.
Digital form of cash in your wallet? Like a debit card linked checking account or a prepaid credit card (i.e. Koho)? Everything described seems to be exactly what we can already do since forever. LOL
I think the difference is you could use it somehow outside of a bank account, like with just a digital wallet? I’m no economist, but I don’t see any tangible benefits to this either. Having a frictionless alternative to etransfers would be nice I guess, but not worth making major changes to our monetary structure.
It looks the same on the surface, however underneath the existing system has a lot of layers that were created over the history of the banking system that don’t need to exist in a digital ledger system like this.
Yeah; this would replace the onion that is EMV with a straightforward digital ledger standard backed by the Bank of Canada.
Under such a system, physical cash could become NFTs of the digital equivalent (and not NFTs in the cryptobro sense).
This could make currency management much less expensive.
From the sounds of it your digital cash would not need to be stored in a bank account or anything like that, so banks won’t have access to your money to invest in other things that make the bank money and potentially lose it all.
Wouldn’t that mean there would be added fees, no insurance for loss, etc.?
Whatever it ends up being, they really need to make a very clear definition of what exactly this is, and how it differs from traditional banking.
There’s no way the majority of the population, especially first generation immigrants to this country, would understand what the hell a “digital Canadian dollar” is.
I see a lot of opportunities for abusing people’s naivety on this one.
The article cites some very good points, The government could indeed control how your money gets spent and they could and would effectively shut you down as a functioning member of society if you got on their bad side. Let’s be clear I am not saying that only the liberals would do this,I’m sure the Conservatives or the NDP wouldn’t roll this back if they came to power and they had the ability to control your pocket book. No politician gives back a new power when they get it, despite any special situation requiring the power ending. No, the liberals wouldn’t be the only party to use such an ability, but they are the party the had the trial run. As for the “need” namely mitigating two potential future threats of the mass adoption of external currencies and the next financial crisis. Precisely how easy is it to walk into a store and pay for your milk in bitcoin, or to pay your electricity bill with Yuan…the answer is you can’t so that first argument is basically smoke and mirrors. As for mitigating a financial crisis…if the same people who control our current fiat currency also control any potential digital currency…l am unclear as to this mechanism of mitigation will work. Cash is king but cash is also anonymous meaning you can spend it on what you like or give it to anyone you want…and the government gets no say. With digital currency that all goes away.
well, with all the people complaining about the money laundering, tax evasion cash deals etc, going digital means it’s all verifiable.(part of why China is also considering cause their corrupted finds way to move money out despite of strict regulations.)
Your kidding…right? Very very few people are complaining about average citizens money laundering or tax evasion cash deals. Beside the really big money laundering and tax evasion is being done by big corporations and they are already verifiable, and in the case of the TE it’s bloody well legal because of tax laws set up to help corporations. In relation to money laundering big corporations when they do get caught, they get a slap on the wrist. This can and will be used to monitor and control how you use your money…period. And if you step out of line, it will be used to shut you down.
How exactly is it different from just freeze your asset/account and you can’t take cash out of ATM again? I mean the shut you down part. Okay, that’s do a situation check.
- say I am some activist protest and is PITA to some gov official, and he wants to make my digital wallet not usable with my government verifiable method.
- I found out either I can’t use the service I was using or say the money is gone, then talk with lawyers backing my org.(maybe others in the same/similar org will run into it as well.)
- pile up the case and evidence then go check directly with the bank about why the service not working(either directly with BoC or other down stream banks, depending on how that service is implemented)
- bank, like freeze asset might tell you you have court order or something that freeze your account from withdrawing. someone has to give the order and press the switch to block your service.
- now you have the upper gov level to inquiry, file law suit or Freedom of Information request. Just find out who give the order to cut you off from financial system.
- make some news and see the distrust destroying their control over night/week. Whoever push to cut you off to make you example off will deal more damage to the entire economical system than damage to you.
- It’s not China here.
As with anything in financial, the only way to prevent bank runs is “trust” that when I want to use my tokens/bills/whatever other format, it’s there and nothing is changed. It was tried and true pretty much through out the history with currency not actually mint from valuable stuff(gold/silver/etc). In fact, for some regiment change to combat corruption, a very good way is to issue new bills and expire the old ones. A good standing citizen where most of their asset in trackable source(bank, liquid cash) can simply just deposit and exchange with new bills. The corrupt hoarding actual cash will have hard time to exchange or declare where the huge pile of cash is coming from. that’s why more “modern” corrupt usually convert to other stable foreign currency, and why modern money laundry network(between countries) is forming to try deal with those. It’s also why you have to declare cash or things of value exceed threshold when you enter Canada.
A full digital approach would cut a lot of cost from our financial system and make a lot of things accountable. It can be issued as a format like prepaid visa card for foreigner visit temporary so there are no privacy issues. You can’t use them to purchase outside Canada anyway.
So tell me what other concerns you have regarding not having cash?
Really…? Your stated approach didn’t work for some people who simply donated to the freedom convoy did it? Do you know why your approach won’t work, because the mainstream media does what the Liberals want. The refusal to give back the power to freeze your bank account which they unjustly took for themselves during the “Emergency” Measures demonstrates a willingness to use peoples money to quell dissent, this CBDC push is just the next logical step. Your hoarding cash argument is an utter fallacy since any amount of cash being hoarded is minuscule compared to the amount being electronically hoarded in offshore accounts by the rich and corporations in tax havens not to mention the tax loopholes. And it is becoming increasingly like China here. I can only hope that if this CBDC comes into play that you and everyone else supporting this get caught up in it and have your cash frozen so that you cannot pay your bills or feed yourselves simply for saying something the government didn’t like.
now you have the upper gov level to inquiry, file law suit or Freedom of Information request. Just find out who give the order to cut you off from financial system. make some news and see the distrust destroying their control over night/week. Whoever push to cut you off to make you example off will deal more damage to the entire economical system than damage to you. It’s not China here.
So I guess you basically defeat your own argument in the first paragraph. Digital money transaction are traceable, up to the point it left that currency system, say bitcoin to USD, and then someone else withdraw that USD as cash, after it become cash then you just know who has it last. All the off shore tricks are using “legal” method to transfer large amount of money or offset the cost to make their balance sheet look like they don’t need to pay more tax. They don’t ship aircraft full of cash to anywhere. This is why they want to form the tax treaty alliance so every government gets their fair share of tax cuts.
Do you know how hard it is to freeze someone’s accounts so they can’t function normally? Even the Fed, CRA can’t really do that without court due process. You said no one hoard cash in any significant amount, it’s only in first world where bank system is very trusted and reliable from abuse, that’s why. If you check any in other 3rd world country with flaky government or authoritarian, they hoard cash in USD etc. The moment any government official touches any “dissidents” account without proper process you are asking for trouble for people to lose trust in that whole bank system. They have to announce it ahead of time, pass the act, run the whole deal to then freeze about 200 accounts. (from CBC article.)
And lastly, as with online misinformation campaign, despite a joke on our “very tolerant” gov that ignores proper protest process, those are not normal protests, and if it’s allowed to run protest without check, then you are asking foreign influence to just throw money on you until you bent. Or like running some social test on how effective to use money to influence political decision through non-official channel. Can the gov do no wrong, nope, I don’t think so. But at least in the west, they are treading a lot more carefully even with the power they have at hand. Similar to bank system, they can only wield it to not break majority trust, and politicians like their power like addicts like their drugs.
