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Bank of Korea’s paper says cryptocurrencies and Fiat can develop symbiotic relationship

South Korea’s Bitcoin adoption has been on the rise ever since Chinese exchanges stopped withdrawals. While Japan has truly eaten into the Chinese trading volumes, South Korea has secured the fifth spot in terms of trading currencies by volume. The central bank and the financial legislative committee of South Korea have decided to not only adopt cryptocurrencies but also launch a cryptocurrency of their own. While the country is taking a positive yet cautious approach towards digital currencies, they are diverting the good amount of effort in studying them in detail. The result of such research is the recent paper by the Central Bank of Korea that predicts how cryptocurrencies and Fiat currencies would go on to develop a symbiotic relationship. Let’s look into the details of the paper and how they are proposing this would happen:

How cryptocurrencies would be sought after:

 

Cryptocurrency Art Gallery by Namecoin via Attribution Engine. Licensed under CC BY.

The working draft submitted by the researchers from the Bank of Korea and Seoul’s Hongik University aims to identify factors that could drive the use of a blockchain-based currency over a government-issued one. The paper clearly highlights the cost-effectiveness of cryptocurrencies and point out that it would turn out to be an attractive positive for cross-border transfers. However, while the cryptocurrency’s flagship advantages are being identified as the key factors, we cannot completely rule out the advantages of fiat currencies.

The proposed symbiotic relationship:

The authors proposed that there would likely be a symbiotic relationship if cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin gain a wider user base and good levels of adoption. For example, when the cost of using one currency rises, the other is likely to fall thereby increasing the attractiveness of the other option. While in cases where factors like speed of transfer or any other factor that influences the priority of decisions, either of the currencies might take precedence depending upon the necessity.

The authors wrote:

“High costs of using fiat currency increase the demand for digital currency. Similarly, high costs of using digital currency relative to fiat currency raise the demand for fiat currency. In a world of imperfect currencies with uncertain costs associated with the use of a currency, it is unlikely that the relative costs of using digital currency will be low enough to drive out and accordingly crowd out fiat currency entirely.”

How the findings will assist central banks:

Most of the Central Banks are currently not in a position to regulate or monitor cryptocurrency as the impact of this sphere over the existing monetary system is something beyond speculation. However, the paper gives some insight into how we can expect the future dynamics of crypto and fiat currencies to shape up. The authors believe that the results of their paper can help shape up the future of a composite monetary system across the globe.