CBDC’s Big Empty
Anyone looking for even a scintilla of a clue buried in a hint of an intention in the Fed’s CBDC discussion draft hunted in vain for guidance on the most consequential strategic inflection point for the U.S. financial-services industry, the financial system, the global payment system, and even the future of money. Once, we all would have had to wait for augers from the on-high Fed to see the fate the imperium decreed. Now, the Fed still thinks it rules all it surveys even though it doesn’t. Soon, it may find out the hard way that fast-moving companies crafting digital money care as little for the central bank’s wishes as they did for those of the media, hotel, and retailing magnates they have already supplanted.