Former Canadian PM Stephen Harper Backs CBDCs & Calls Bitcoin (BTC) As Reserve Currency

As cryptocurrencies make their way to the mainstream financial markets, world leaders have started talking about the need to have central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as well as the role of giant cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in future.

During his recent interview with Cambridge House’s Jay Martin, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that Bitcoin (BTC) can slowly emerge as a reserve currency posing strong competition to the U.S. Dollar.

It’s hard to see what the alternative is to the U.S. dollar as the world’s major reserve currency. Other than gold, Bitcoin, a whole basket of things [...] I think you’ll see the number of things that people use as reserves will expand, but the U.S. dollar will still be the bulk of it,” said Harper.

The former Canadian PM also expressed his views about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and added that they are “inevitable” to some extent. However, he stated that CBDCs are subject to monetary policies around the world.

Ultimately, if you have a digital currency and the purpose of the central bank is to control inflation and create a stable currency and price ability, then digital currency is just kind of an evolution of the marketplace," said Harper. "But if it’s part of a series of what I think are wild experiments as to the role of central banking, then it worries me a lot.”

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently conducted a survey of 174 IMF members and found that only 23% of them I.e. 40 central banks are “legally allowed to issue digital currencies”.

Arthur Rossi, a research officer at the IMF Legal Department’s Financial and Fiscal Law unit said: “To help countries make this assessment, we reviewed the central bank laws of 174 IMF members … and found out that only about 40 are legally allowed to issue digital currencies”.

Last week, speaking at an online event organized by Reuters, ECB chief Christine Lagarde slammed Bitcoin (BTC) saying For those who had assumed that it might turn into a currency — terribly sorry, but this is an asset and it’s a highly speculative asset which has conducted some funny business and some interesting and totally reprehensible money-laundering activity”.

On the other hand, former U.S.Treasury Secretary Larry Summers believes that Bitcoin is here to stay. During his recent interviews, Summers said: I think some institution, like Bitcoin (BTC), is here to stay. I don’t think the whole thing is going to collapse…people are going to move towards it…the finiteness of its supply [is] going to raise prices.”