Prepare For ‘Uncertain Future of Money’ – US Intelligence Center

America’s National Intelligence Council, a mid- and long-term strategic planning center, has issued a warning to the USA and its allies about “threats” to the dollar and the euro from stablecoin projects and “privately issued digital currencies.”

In its latest four-year report, named “Global Trends 2040: A More Contested World,” the body claimed that private-sector coins and other non-state-issued tokens “could add complexity to the conduct of monetary policy by reducing countries’ control over their exchange rates and money supply.”

The report’s authors also noted that China would likely emerge as America’s biggest rival with “greater contestation” in store at “every level” – including industry 4.0 tech.

Although the authors did not mention cryptoassets like bitcoin (BTC) by name, they did name-check “Facebook’s proposed Libra” project (now Diem) – a stablecoin project that is still yet to materialize after regulatory wrangling in the United States and elsewhere. The Chinese digital yuan also received a name check, as did other central bank digital currency (CBDC) projects.

In a section named the “uncertain future of money,” the authors wrote,

“The financial sector is not immune from the technological changes that are transforming other industries. Digital currencies are likely to gain wider acceptance during the next two decades as the number of [CBDCs] increase.”

They added that should Facebook and other countries succeed with token rollouts, this “would further drive acceptance of digital currencies, but indicated that regulators could play a crucial role.

They wrote,

“The extent to which privately issued digital currencies will provide a substitute for the use of national or regional fiat currencies, including the US dollar and the euro, to settle transactions will depend on the regulatory rules that are established.”

And these “privately issued digital currencies,” the authors remarked, “could add complexity to the conduct of monetary policy by reducing countries’ control over their exchange rates and money supply.”

There were other financial-sector warnings ahead, too. Over the course of the next two decades, they added, “several global economic trends,” could plague international unity, “including rising national debt, a more complex and fragmented trading environment, the global spread of trade in services, new employment disruptions and the continued rise of powerful firms.”

Also in the forecast were the following:

• states will experience reduced economic flexibility as they navigate greater debt burdens
• trading rules will diversify
• public pressure to deal with challenges including demographic shifts and climate change will increase
• Asian economies will continue decades of growth – but at a slower pace
• higher growth in Asia could help countries avoid middle-income traps

The report’s sentiments echoed those of thinkers at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, where world economic leaders were warned not to take the economic status quo “for granted for the next decades.”

And financial experts at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) wrote in January that “uncertainty [has] reached unprecedented levels” during the coronavirus pandemic, with infectious spillovers from some influential nations threatening to cause further economic instability in the years ahead.
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