As the Bank of Canada prepares for a digital Canadian dollar, democratic concerns loom large (theconversation.com)

submitted 2 years ago by Evkob@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[-] investorsexchange@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 years ago

This is the first I’ve heard of plans for a digital currency in Canada. Do you have a link?

[-] SilentStorms@lemmy.fmhy.ml 16 points 2 years ago

First I heard too, I found this from the Bank of Canada.

tl;dr Its not crypto and they don't have immediate plans to implement it, but they're exploring the idea and just completed a public consultation on it.

[-] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 years ago

What is a digital Canadian dollar? Simply put, a digital Canadian dollar would be a digital form of the cash in your wallet. Like cash, it could buy the things you need. But the advantage is that you could also use it for online purchases and to transfer money between family and friends. And businesses could use it to pay each other.

Digital form of cash in your wallet? Like a debit card linked checking account or a prepaid credit card (i.e. Koho)? Everything described seems to be exactly what we can already do since forever. LOL

[-] SilentStorms@lemmy.fmhy.ml 8 points 2 years ago

I think the difference is you could use it somehow outside of a bank account, like with just a digital wallet? I'm no economist, but I don't see any tangible benefits to this either. Having a frictionless alternative to etransfers would be nice I guess, but not worth making major changes to our monetary structure.

[-] lightrush@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

It looks the same on the surface, however underneath the existing system has a lot of layers that were created over the history of the banking system that don't need to exist in a digital ledger system like this.

[-] adespoton@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 years ago

Yeah; this would replace the onion that is EMV with a straightforward digital ledger standard backed by the Bank of Canada.

Under such a system, physical cash could become NFTs of the digital equivalent (and not NFTs in the cryptobro sense).

This could make currency management much less expensive.

[-] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

From the sounds of it your digital cash would not need to be stored in a bank account or anything like that, so banks won't have access to your money to invest in other things that make the bank money and potentially lose it all.

[-] Showroom7561@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 years ago

Wouldn't that mean there would be added fees, no insurance for loss, etc.?

Whatever it ends up being, they really need to make a very clear definition of what exactly this is, and how it differs from traditional banking.

There's no way the majority of the population, especially first generation immigrants to this country, would understand what the hell a "digital Canadian dollar" is.

I see a lot of opportunities for abusing people's naivety on this one.