Over the course of 2020, numerous countries across the globe raced toward their own digital versions of their currencies, known as central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. The crypto industry still has its selling points, however, even if most countries launched CBDCs, according to Jake Yocom-Piatt, co-founder of crypto project Decred.
“I expect many nation states will create their own CBDCs in the not-so-distant future, but there is a key differentiator between CBDCs and cryptocurrencies,” Yocom-Piatt told Cointelegraph. “Cryptocurrencies, e.g. Bitcoin and Decred, are fundamentally fairer systems than fiat currencies, so while CBDCs may adopt many cryptocurrency features, they cannot compete on fairness.”
Last year, China led the way in terms of CBDC development pace, while the United States took a slower approach. Recent developments indicate an increased sense of importance around CBDC development in the U.S. CBDCs will likely represent digital versions of countries’ dollars, although many details remain in flux at this stage.
As mentioned by Yocom-Piatt, crypto assets pose different core frameworks, depending on the asset and its makeup. Bitcoin (BTC), for example, remains untied to national currencies and borders, run by computer code and miners.
“Based on cryptocurrencies being demonstrably fairer with deterministic issuance schedules and self-custodied assets, I expect them to be relatively unaffected by CBDCs, which are just digital fiat,” Yocom-Piatt said.
Stablecoins, on the other hand, might logically feel more effect from a CBDC-run world, as their main purpose is to represent fiat in digital form, on the blockchain, pegged to specific value. The future of crypto-native stablecoins could still depend on the upcoming specifications of CBDCs though.
“Depending on what actions you can perform with your CBDC assets, it could make stablecoins mostly obsolete,” the Decred co-founder noted. “If there are too many restrictions on CBDC assets, stablecoins may compete on a flexibility front.”
Stablecoins, such as USDT and USDC, function on the blockchain and allow for a bevvy of transactions and storage accommodations. USDC in particular saw a notable amount of usage within the decentralized finance, or DeFi sector of crypto in 2020.