Is There a Project Underway to Develop an “e-SDR”?

• Is There a Project Underway to Develop an “e-SDR”?
  by https://lonestarwhitehouse.blogspot.com/
  In a previous article, we examined a report issued in the fall of 2018 by the OMFIF and IBM. That report summarized where things stood at that time in regards to the potential for central banks to adopt either Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC’s) or some form of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) or both.
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  On page 22 of that report we noted an interesting segment that talked about the idea of some day creating a global reserve asset which they called an “e-SDR”. Here is wording from page 22 of that report (I added underlines for emphasis below):
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  “Digital tokens as reserves The impact on monetary policy would further depend on whether the digital tokens in question have the status of reserves. As one respondent put it, “If these tokens are considered as reserves, and the blockchain system is a new medium for recording transactions, then there should be no impact on monetary policy, and the existing tools may continue to be used.’ Around 80% of survey respondents shared this opinion. In today’s system, the International Monetary Fund’s aspiration for its special drawing right to become a global reserve currency has been held back by conflicting geopolitical interests and priorities of the reserve-issuing central banks of the US, euro area, China, Japan and UK.
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  CBDCs can circumvent such hurdles by enabling the private sector to work directly with the central banks to create a digital SDR to use as a unit of account and store of value. Such an e-SDR would be the quintessential reserve asset, because it would be fully backed by the reserve currencies in the IMF- determined ratio. The supply of e-SDRs would in turn be dependent on market demand. This would require the creation of a sufficiently large e-SDR-denominated money market.”
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  Because there is much world wide interest in the idea of the potential for the SDR to become either a competing global reserve asset or even replace the US dollar as the primary global reserve currency, this article will attempt to take a little deeper dive into this idea and some related questions that arise. The goal is to understand as best we can what is actually being talked about here and whether or not the IMF would be involved in this or not. Below we will examine it.
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  read more.

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