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What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, November 29th, and today we are catching up on CBDCs.

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Hello, friends. Well, today we are returning to a topic that has come and gone as a major area of focus, but always looms large just around the corner and which we've seen over the

course of the last year has strangely become a more significant political issue, particularly

on the American right,

than I think many people would have expected. What we're talking about, of course, is central bank

digital currencies, CBDCs, which have taken on a place in the political discourse that is far

beyond just digital assets, or even money generally. Now, among major Western currencies,

the euro is the farthest along in the push to

issue a retail CBDC. Enabling legislation is currently being debated in Parliament, and the

initiative has received strong backing from the European Central Bank. In multiple Western and

Asian nations, wholesale CBDCs are actively being tested in advanced stage pilot programs

and small live experiments. By and large,

wholesale CBDCs have been relatively uncontroversial. In practice, they simply function as an upgrade

to existing banking infrastructure to improve speed and reduce costs by using some elements

of blockchain technology. There's even an argument to be made that the Federal Reserve's new

Fed Now clearing system looks similar to wholesale CBDCs in other regions. Retail CBDCs, on the other hand, are an entirely different

...