The IMF has forever been raising concerns over the disruptive nature of cryptocurrency.  The IMF has already advised the Marshall Islands against issuing their national cryptocurrency concerning concerns over anti-money laundering.

The IMF has stated that they are going to use ongoing research and experiments with blockchain technology for their future policy. Of note,

Brad Garlinghouse of Ripple’s was involved in discussion with Ross Leckow, the Deputy General Counsel of IMF during the Singapore Fintech Festival, 2018.  They were discussing the application of the digital assets in the cross-border banking and remittance industry.  The discussion was more focused on international payments.  They were as well discussing the unbanked population.

IMF has been discussing three areas of their activity related to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

When speaking to the audience, Brad Garlinghouse stated that IMF is putting in a lot of attention to Fintech, particularly the blockchain technology.  He further added it can be difficult to discuss blockchain without considering several other new technologies which are becoming a part of the Fintech debate.

The Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT), crypto assets, along with artificial intelligence need to be discussed.

He referred to several documents that have been published recently from IMF.  All of these documents were related to blockchain and cryptocurrency.

He stated that the member banks and governments are very keen about the regulations in the fintech sector.  Further, he stated that they were showing considerable interest and guidance concerning handling the regulations in this emerging industry.

The IMF Deputy General Counsel approved of growing demand for advice in this area, which he says was very obvious during their annual meeting in Bali in the past month.  He spoke about their Bali FinTech Agenda, which provided a comprehensive framework of the issues that countries are to take into consideration when design a regulatory policy for this industry. He stated that the comprehensive framework of issues would serve as an anchor in bringing up regulations for this industry.

With countries like Marshall Islands being largely dependent on the funds from big economies like the US, if the Marshall Islands are going to pursue their plan of national cryptocurrency, then there are probabilities for several countries to stop financial aid to the Marshall Islands.

However, David Paul, the minister assisting the president of Marshall Islands has to say that as a nation they have the authority and right to launch a national currency, whether fiat or digital.

Of note, Hilda Cathy Heine faced political attacks following the proposal by the government to issue a national currency.

We need to see in real-time about how events unfold.