Cryptocurrency acceptance approaches as G20 develops digital payments framework

Bob
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Posted on: July 13, 2020 6:28 pm EDT

The finance leaders of G20 countries are laying out plans to allow cryptocurrency as a form of payment

One of the main things holding back the adoption of cryptocurrency is the few options available for digital coins to be used to pay for services or products, but that might be about to change. On July 11, it was reported by Kyodo News that the next G20 summit, which brings together representatives from 19 countries and the European Union, will discuss the groundwork to accept digital payments. According to the report, these changes are expected to take place by the beginning of October at the G20 Finance Ministerial and Deputies Meetings in Washington DC, also before the next summit to take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in November.

The Japanese news site said that the policy change coming from G20 officials was made in response to several crypto-related events like China’s progress on creating a digital yuan, and Facebook’s anticipated release of Libra. Last month, it was reported by Cointelegraph that the People’s Bank of China’s National Council for Social Security announced that the backend architecture for the country’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) had been completed.

This has been a topic of discussion at the latest G20 meetings for the past couple of years and it seems that the air is still filled with confusion. During the 2019 G20 summit in Osaka, most leaders agreed that the existence of cryptocurrency did not represent a threat to the world’s monetary stability. Actually, most of them agreed that the technological innovation that comes with cryptocurrencies could bring significant results to the general economy. However, during the summit in October last year, members said that stablecoins did represent a serious risk to public policy and financial regulations.