⚠️ HRF CBDC ⛓️🪙 alert from HRF for South Africa (21-FEB-2024)
🗝️ℹ️ (Key Information)
CBDC Status: Pilot
CBDC Launch: n/a
CBDC Model: n/a
CBDC Issued: n/a
Inflation Rate: 7.04%
One-Sentence Summary:
South Africa navigates the complexities of developing Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) amidst potential challenges in governance, access, and regulatory boundaries, while also grappling with national corruption concerns.
✅ 🇿🇦 is progressing in the piloting stage of CBDC deployment, having contributed to the construction of two CBDC models under the guidance of the Bank for International Settlements and creating its local proof-of-concept.
✅ Working with other global banks, including the Reserve Bank of Australia, the Central Bank of Malaysia, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, these authorities and the South African Reserve Bank are conducting wholesale CBDC pilot operations as part of 'Project Dunbar', aiming to enhance transactions and solve governance, accessibility, and jurisdictional issues.
✅ In a separate initiative, the South African Reserve Bank has developed its proof-of-concept, labelled as 'Project Khokha', to conduct trials on tokenization and distributed ledger technology in interbank settlements.
✅ In spite of the bank's efforts, the governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Lesetja Kganyago, expressed reservations about the feasibility and safety of decentralized markets.
✅ The South African Reserve Bank is also exploring retail CBDCs, hoping to boost regulatory reporting, AML (anti-money laundering), and CFT (combatting the financing of terrorism) strategies, though at the same time, preserving user privacy.
✅ South African Reserve Bank's deputy governor, Kuben Naidoo, expressed concerns that widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies could weaken central bank authority, and hence called for stronger regulation to avoid theft, money laundering, and undermining of monetary policy.
✅ Despite South Africa's overall favorable rating of 79 out of 100 in Freedom House’s 2023 Freedom in the World report, the country struggles with deep-rooted corruption issues.
✅ The lack of effective implementation of anticorruption laws is raising eyebrows over whether corrupt practices could jeopardize CBDC operations and the associated promises of curtailed surveillance, control, or other potential risks.
✅ There is apprehension that blatant corruption could lead to politically biased distribution of resources through subsidies, price controls, or imposed restrictions in the use of CBDCs.
#SouthAfrica #CBDC #Banking #Currency #Corruption
Engaging Question: What safeguards need to be put in place to ensure that the evolution of Central Bank Digital Currencies in South Africa does not exacerbate existing corruption and transparency issues?
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)
CBDC Tracker bot brought to you by npub18s59mqct7se3xkhxr3epkagvuydwtvhpsacj67shrta8eknynegqttz5c3
#plebstr
