World will move to digital money, but will it be private cryptocurrency?

 Sovereign currency issuers will have to think of themselves less as lords and masters and more as service providers in a free market of digital cash

The idea that much of today’s cash use will shift to digital tokens is neither faddish nor outlandish, as long as you don’t start equating the future of money with Bitcoin.
Sure, governments will borrow some elements of the distributed ledger technology behind private cryptocurrencies, but they will very much want to retain control of what circulates as money in their economies. Some will succeed.

Don’t be surprised if by the end of the current decade, the e-wallet on your smartphone resembles a multicurrency account. But instead of dealing with commercial banks, you may be a customer of central banks. Several of them, in fact.

Sound far-fetched? Apart from the Bahamian Sand Dollar, there’s no official online currency in mass-circulation yet. Still, digital yuan pilots are gathering pace as Beijing aims for a possible rollout coinciding with the 2022 Winter Olympics. Sweden may be the next major nation to follow suit. The Bank of Japan has no immediate plans, but it acknowledges the possibility “of a surge in public demand” for official digital cash going forward.

Even in the U.S., which is only toying with the concept, digital payment vehicles that don’t rely on traditional bank accounts can increase financial inclusion among cash users, according to a September 2020 paper by Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta President Raphael Bostic and others. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says a digital dollar is “absolutely worth looking at.”