Over the past year, several nations or banks of nations have come forth and issued plans to create digital currencies that its residents or citizens can utilize to purchase both goods and services. Strangely, the Bank of Korea (BOK) is not one of those regions.
BOK: Now Is Not the Time for a Digital Currency
BOK, despite rumors that the area was looking to establish a stronger presence in the digital currency space through a digitized form of fiat, has come forward to explain that it’s not looking to develop a national cryptocurrency at any point in the immediate future. The bank has commented that the adoption of such a currency would no doubt be a very complicated issue, and thus it has concerns regarding the steps and processes that would be involved with releasing such a currency into the wild.
Having said that, the bank has also hinted that there could be plans for a digital currency later down the line, and that it’s taking a “wait and see” approach to the situation. While it’s not looking to issue such a currency now, it believes that there may be a time when such plans are necessary, and it will wait to see if perhaps such a cryptocurrency should be required.
In a statement, representatives of the bank explained:
We will closely monitor the progress of the issuance of digital currency by major central banks and actively participate in related discussions with international organizations such as the International Settlement Bank (BIS).
The currency – should it ever be issued – would be introduced and controlled by the bank, which means it would be centralized. This is something of a problem in that most cryptocurrencies are designed to be decentralized, or rather uncontrolled by a single entity or conglomerate. Digital currency was built to give financial independence back to the people that use it.
It’s designed to give these people privacy and more control over what they use their money for, so the idea that it would be issued by a central bank goes against these notions.
Other Nations Disagree
Nevertheless, the idea of a bank-issued cryptocurrency has become rather popular with other nations in 2019 such as China, which recently passed a law that would allow for the creation of a digital form of the yuan. China has commented that a central bank-issued digital currency would allow the country to compete with the likes of Libra, the new crypto project being developed by Facebook.
Other nations that have sought to release their own digital currencies include Russia and even the United States. There is also a call from Hassan Rouhani – the president of Iran – for all Muslim nations to gather under a single cryptocurrency unit so that they can potentially become stronger and boost their statuses in the financial industry.