Central Bank Digital Currencies: The Consumerization of Money
Consumerization is the influence that products originating in the consumer markets eventually have on the broader commercial markets. Apple is the prototypical example of a consumer-focused company reshaping and ultimately transforming small-business, enterprise, and public-sector industries: the first iPhone began as a purely consumer-oriented gadget and eventually thoroughly disrupted communications and collaboration at a global scale; likewise, the first iPad and more. While the goals of cryptocurrencies often differ dramatically from that of central bank digital currencies (CBDC), they provide evidence of feasibility and proof of concept for retail deployment of digital currencies at scale; in this respect, whether we like it or not, this emerging era of CBDC and the consumerization of money traces its lineage to the influence of cryptocurrencies. What: The Premise Central Bank Digital Currencies have progressed in the past few years from being a hypothetical model to now an inexorable certainty. Todays fiat currencies are mostly digitized; for instance, the Federal Reserve provides a digital dollar to commercial banks, and commercial banks, in turn, provide digital dollars electronically to consumers, households, and commercial entities. This pact ostensibly has served the stakeholders well: the Federal Reserve focuses on boosting the economy and the strength of the incumbent financial ecosystem, and the