The easy riposte to the BIS would be a Mandy Rice-Davies "Well he would, wouldn't he" but there is more to their objection than simply preferring Central Bank Digital Currencies to the DCs that lack the CB imprimatur.
From Ledger Insights, June 24:
Today the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central bank to central banks, released a chapter of its Annual report, “The next-generation monetary and financial system,” outlining its vision for a tokenized economy. The BIS sees tokenized deposits dominating retail payments with wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDC) enabling interbank settlement, but argues stablecoins lack the fundamental features of sound money.
Why stablecoins are flawed
The BIS identifies three critical flaws in stablecoins: they lack singleness, elasticity and integrity. Singleness refers to universal acceptance without question, requiring token holders to know they can always exchange $1 for a dollar rather than 99 cents or less. The BIS says this is only possible through central bank money settling bank transactions.
Elasticity means central banks and commercial banks can grant credit to expand the money supply. “Where you have very complex interlocking payment obligations, if you had to wait for the incoming payments before you have sufficient liquidity to execute your own outgoing payment, that would be a recipe for gridlock,” explained Hyun Song Shin, the Head of the Monetary and Economic Department at the BIS during a media briefing.
“That feature cannot be satisfied with stablecoins because stablecoins need the backing reserves upfront. So unless you actually have the balances
already in your wallet, you cannot execute that payment,” said Mr Shin. “So I think for large value payments that elasticity is going to be absolutely key.” (Italics is our emphasis.)The integrity problem stems from stablecoins being “digital bearer instruments on borderless public blockchains” that have become “the go-to choice for illicit use to bypass integrity safeguards,” according to the report.
Beyond these fundamental issues, the BIS warns stablecoins threaten monetary sovereignty through dollarization and could destabilize government debt markets when issuers sell reserves en masse during crises....
Mandy was a whore with a minor role in the Profumo scandal of 1963.
Here's how Wikipedia tells the story:...Rice-Davies came to London , where she met Christine Keeler and a well-connected osteopath Stephen Ward. As a result of her involvement in Ward's social set, she became intimate with many powerful people, including the then Viscount Astor. She never in fact met John Profumo, whose brief relationship with Keeler, with whom Rice-Davies shared a flat, was at the centre of the affair that caused him to resign from the government in June 1963. Rice-Davies had been one of the mistresses of notorious slum landlord Peter Rachman who had owned the flat she shared with Keeler.
"He would, wouldn't he?"
While giving evidence at the trial of Stephen Ward, Rice-Davies made the quip for which she is most remembered and which is frequently used by politicians in Britain[2]. When the prosecuting counsel pointed out that Lord Astor denied having an affair or having even met her, she replied,
"Well, he would, wouldn't he?"....
- ^ This quote later became a common saying in British politics, often altered to "He would say that, wouldn't he?" Examples follow in these links:
- Scottish Parliament committee news release 22 February 2001 "So perhaps there is a slight Mandy Rice Davies feel to this backing with a hint of 'well he would, wouldn't he?'."
- Lords Hansard text for 6 Feb 2002 "I pause to anticipate the interjection—'He would say that, wouldn't he?'" spoken by Lord McIntosh of Haringey.
- Well he would say that, wouldn't he? by Bronwen Maddox in The Times January 11, 2006
