The Bank of Canada has revealed its decision to hasten its plans to potentially create a digital currency. This was revealed by the bank’s Deputy Governor, Tim Lane.
Tim Lane stated that for several years, the Bank of Canada has been making series of analysis on the kind of situation that might push the bank into issuing a digital currency. According to him, the coronavirus pandemic has pushed the bank into this inevitable decision-making stage sooner than they had envisaged.
Although the Bank of Canada seems to be making haste in creating and issuing a digital currency, a report by Fxstreet suggests that the Deputy Governor believes that digital currency is absolutely unnecessary and states that the bank’s view concerning digital currency has not changed.
The Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada stated that only the Central Bank of a country can guarantee digital currency that has universal access and is completely safe and designed with the interest of the public at heart; not for making profit. He added that the bank will issue a digital currency only if and when the time is right and promised that it is treating digital currency as a top priority.
The International Monetary Fund, in a video posted months ago on Twitter suggested that cryptocurrency could ‘completely change the way we sell, buy, save, invest, and pay our bills’. The international Monetary Fund buttressed this by saying that digital currency ‘could be the next step in the evolution of money’.
The video shared via Twitter gave vital details on what cryptocurrency is. In the video, cryptocurrency was referred to as a special currency. The video highlighted the numerous benefits this currency had to offer. It explained that benefits such as eradicating the need for middle men, increase in transaction speed and reducing costs make Bitcoin worth considering.
What really is digital currency?
Simply put, digital currency is money that is not physical. It is digital as the name implies. They have similar properties with real/physical cash, can be used to save, invest, make transactions, etc., but do not have a physical form like bank notes or minted coins. According to Wikipedia, digital money which is also known as electronic money or currency is any currency, money or money-like asset that is essentially managed, exchanged and stored on digital computer systems, especially over the internet.
Digital currency includes the famous cryptocurrency, virtual currency and central bank digital currency and may be recorded on a distributed database on the internet, a centralized electronic computer database owned by a company or a bank.
Digital currency is the future of money and it is just a matter of time before it replaces physical money and banks around the world begin to issue it.
