⚠️ HRF CBDC ⛓️🪙 alert from HRF for India (09-MAR-2024)

🗝️ℹ️ (Key Information)

CBDC Status: Launched

CBDC Launch: 2022-11-01

CBDC Model: Retail

CBDC Issued: n/a

Inflation Rate: 6.7%

One-Sentence Summary:

🇮🇳 is bracing for widespread adoption of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), facing both potential efficacy of economic transactions and critical human rights concerns.

✅ The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) initiated the pilot project for wholesale CBDC in October 2022, officially launching it on November 1, 2022.

✅ On December 1, 2022, the RBI piloted a retail CBDC, or "Digital Rupee," which amassed around 1,460,000 users and 310,000 merchants within a year, thereby entering the launch phase.

✅ Even before the first pilot, RBI was purportedly considering its cryptocurrency back in 2017.

✅ The journey of CBDC in 🇮🇳 started in 2021, with a bill proposed to ban cryptocurrency and introduce CBDC while upholding the value of CBDCs as non-anonymous transactions and potential for central bank monetary control.

✅ 🇮🇳's Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman opined in February 2022 that CBDC could possibly streamline and cheapen the currency management system.

✅ There were about 18,000 CBDC transactions daily in September 2023, with the hope of achieving 1,000,000 by year-end.

✅ However, attaining this goal posed challenges around scalability of technology and the capacities of banks.

✅ RBI looked at incorporating offline CBDC transactions and augmented programmability in 2024, taking into account that only half of 🇮🇳's population has internet access.

✅ RBI Governor Shri Shaktikanta Das stated in March 2024 that despite 4.3 million users and 4 million merchants, they are in no rush for a full-fledged launch to ensure safety, robustness, and integrity of the digital currency.

✅ There are overarching concerns regarding the use of CBDCs magnifying harassment of government critics by making it easier to freeze and seize the money of activists, political rivals, and protestors as it permits direct government control over citizens' finances.

#RBI #CBDC #BankingInnovation #IndiaFintech #HumanRights

🤔 How do you think the advent of CBDCs could revolutionize the banking system in India, given the potential advantages and risks, particularly around human rights and civil liberties? Share your thoughts below.

Disclaimer: This is an AI-generated summary of the original text from HRF, forigve fuck-ups plox. If you find it useful, ⚡ the Tracker Bot because the AI and Cloud bits are not free to run.

Source of data: https://cbdctracker.hrf.org/home (npub1zhqcda52mrvcc0vkwegwsp5xtpk6l6x5kqx85f06tu9lw5h6xx0scch0dw)

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