The young men (and they’re all young men BTW) in t-shirts with tats who promote cryptocurrency at the University of YouTube regularly cite the coming of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as a key reason to love the crypto; but so far and to date, CBDCs have failed to arrive.
Nobody has made more of an effort than China to get this snowball to run downhill having introduced plans as far back as 2014 and Shu Li (et al.) from the Southwest University of Science and Technology has conducted a survey among potential users to see why so few have be keen.
The research uncovered two obvious and intuitive points and one rather curious one about what might make some keener.
First, there’s a perceived value problem. Why do something you can already do with something you’re unfamiliar with and will have to newly set instructions to do? Unless there’s manifest value to the process. Today it represents a time-expensive faff, so why bother?
Second, there’s Alipay and WeChat Pay that everybody now uses. These services are ubiquitous, fast, user friendly and link directly to established bank accounts. Set up takes minutes and if another service isn’t better, again, why bother with the switch?
Thirdly, the survey identified one reason some potential users would take on the challenge of using E-Cny, patriotism. Some in the survey responded that if something was in the national interest it would sway their opinion about adoption. This cohort though were a minority.
The conclusion is simple. If the government wants people to go down the E-Cny road they’re going to have to make it easier and more useful than existing systems. Or, present it as a patriotic duty. [I see none of this happening]
The t-shirt and tat army will continue to wang on about CBDCs imminent arrival as it’s good for business; but if China isn’t, in reality, all that fussed and/or prepared to dragoon the populace toward its use what chance has the rest of the world in moving their citizenry in this direction?
The paper in full is here Understanding E-Cny Adoption Intention Among Individual Users.
Happy Sunday.