Central banks and big tech continue to race on with the evolution of money. Private stable coins, cryptocurrency, and central bank digital currency (CBDC) are moving forward for retail use by citizens and small businesses in markets around the globe with many eyes on China.  In this episode, FRT catches up with Ronit Ghose, CFA Global Head of Banks, Co-Head of Global FinTech, Citi Research, and the author of a new report “Future of Money: Crypto, CBDCs and 21st Century Cash” to get his take on how things are developing and what the implications are for market participants.  

The discussion focuses on new developments by governments and the private sector, different design considerations for tokenized and account-based systems, the potential risk factors for bank disintermediation, facilitated runs on commercial banks, and the tradeoffs presented by different models for different sectors of the economy. The forecast of a format war is one of the key takeaways from this update on digital currency, albeit with overall growth in Digital Money 2.0.