Digital currencies are cutting across borders. Here's how regulators can catch up

Globally, there is an accelerated shift towards digital payments and the ownership and use of digital currency. These innovations have also kickstarted long-overdue conversations not just between private enterprise and regulators, but also among regulators internationally and within jurisdictions. The outcome of these conversations will have profound implications on how society harnesses the potential benefits of digital currencies and avoids unnecessary risks.

Policy debates about digital currency have been going on since Satoshi Nakamoto released his bitcoin paper in 2008. The most recent debates focus on two forms of digital currencies: central bank digital currency (CBDC) and “stablecoins” (cryptocurrencies that peg their value to some external reference point). This is why they are the focus of the current work led by the World Economic Forum’s Digital Currency Governance Consortium (DCGC), which has produced eight policy frameworks to guide industry and policy-makers through some of the most critical challenges, opportunities and decisions related to CBDC and stablecoins.

Many digital currencies claim to be created for the purpose of improving existing payment systems and promoting financial inclusion. For a cross-border payment to take place, multiple intermediaries are typically involved, which slows down the process and increases the cost. Digital currencies claim to reduce transactional friction by bypassing intermediaries altogether. Such ambitions, the complex design behind the technology and the existing legal framework have exposed digital currencies to a fragmented regulatory environment with gaps, inconsistencies and redundancies at domestic and international levels.

The DCGC included in its report a detailed analysis of the regulatory and policy gaps and inconsistencies that exist for stablecoins and CBDC. There are four challenges in particular:

While different countries take different approaches towards CBDCs and stablecoins, we anticipate that they may be used in the same way by the consumers, and may even operate on similar blockchains. However, one potential issue is that similar types of risks may be treated differently in each case. The motivation for the recent DCGC paper is to help foster a balanced regulatory and policy environment for both innovations, and a way to examine their risks and how to mitigate them.

While the regulatory approach to digital currencies is still being shaped, some principles in law-making may be helpful to regulators who are trying to bridge the gap between innovation and regulation:

Policy development for digital currencies needs a consistent framework to avoid creating confusion for the payments ecosystem. Policy-makers will need to identify areas where existing regulations are sufficient – and where new regulations are needed for stablecoins and retail CBDC, and for an ecosystem where they will co-exist with other payment methods.

The DCGC paper proposes a five-step framework for identifying, preventing and addressing gaps and incompatibilities: risk-mapping; agency-mapping; forming a task force; setting priorities; and identifying gaps and inconsistencies. While this framework represents an oversimplified view of the legislative process and it may not be able to address all issues identified in the paper, we hope it provides a way forward in addressing regulatory gaps and inconsistencies in relation to emerging digital currencies.

To prepare for the future, digital currency policy-makers must consider carefully how they should structure their laws and regulations, as well as how they create both domestic and cross-jurisdictional coordinated structures. This paper supports a measured, coordinated, multi-jurisdictional and inclusive approach in the creation and implementation of policies, laws and regulations, in order to limit the creation of gaps and inconsistencies from the outset. Such an approach could lay the foundation for sustainable innovation, align regulatory frameworks and foster greater global collaboration.