The new Netflix series I Am Married…But!, which ranks no. 1 on the Taiwan charts, is based on a line from author Eileen Chang's novel Love in a Fallen City: ‘In the endless wilderness of a million years of time, there is nothing else but to gently remark, “Oh, you're here, too?”’

It may seem fanciful to compare Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), the theme of this issue of the Taiwan Banker, with a once-in-a-million-years love affair. Although money has changed a thousand times over its 40,000 years of existence, however, from the ancient times when we caught a chicken and exchanged it for three fishes, all the way to the banknotes in our wallets, the tangible physical form of money has never changed. The numbers on your passbook can be exchanged at any time for a banknote at a bank, but in the future, the numbers on your passbook will just be a set of numbers, recorded in a universally trusted central bank platform.

Having spent tens of thousands of years getting used to physical banknotes, despite the rise of modern e-payments, everything is still built on the back of the monetary system managed by the central bank and commercial banks. Depositing money directly in the central bank's ledger, rather than in banks, to earn interest, will be a historic shift.

In the face of this change, some countries with insufficient cash infrastructures immediately swore an alliance, but most proceeded with an abundance of caution. Others who changed their presidents earlier this year declared their breakup with digital currencies. Different countries are showing different moods.

The prudence of some central bankers like Yang Chin-long is warranted. The monetary system is built on the need both for human transactions and confidence in the currency and its issuer; any attempt to challenge sovereign fiat currencies must simultaneously address both points. Neither Satoshi Nakamoto's global utopian fantasies about the issuance of Bitcoin, nor Facebook's attempt to create a new global payments system with the issuance of Libra, could do so. Today, due to its volatility, Bitcoin is more of an investment instrument than a medium of exchange, and Libra recoiled after broad regulatory pushback. Olaf Scholz, German finance minister at the time, called it “a wolf in sheep's clothing.”

Thus, CBDC was born out of the concept of decentralized blockchain technology, but its subsequent development has nevertheless still adhered to the principle of centrality; no matter how the times change, people’s basic need for money remains the same. The technical tests on the road to CBDC issuance have basically been passed, but the more difficult part is confidence – including the beliefs that property will not disappear, privacy will not be violated, and the existing financial order will be maintained. The establishment of consensus is far more difficult than the technological aspects.

To end the with another great quote from the show, “Who says that marriage is the beginning of the end? It’s clearly the beginning.” The same is true for CDBCs.