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💥XLM: Get Ready for the Phoenix (CBDCs)💥

The ISO 20022 standard & Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) will usher in a new global financial system.

November 19, 2022

(💥Dinarian Note: I included the full article from "The Economist" Get Ready for the Phoenix Source: Economist; 01/9/88, Vol. 306, pp 9-1 for your reading pleasure 💥)

In 1988, the cover of The Economist was titled “Get ready for a world currency”. The magazine cover showed a phoenix rising from the ashes of burning US currency.

The first sentence of the Article began with:

“Thirty Years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans and people in many other rich countries …will be paying for their shopping with the same currency”

The author continues to suggest a single unified currency that would ease the challenges and difficulties of international financial transactions.

The author also mentions a world connected like never before. Instead of the Yuan, Dollar, or Euro, this new form of currency, a “phoenix coin” would dominate. This new coin would replace the existing financial system and there would be no need for expensive international currencies or cumbersome money wires. Everyone would be using the same coin/currency.

Now just over 30 years later, this ‘prediction’ is now becoming a reality.

It’s important to realize this article was written during the early days of the internet and well before the world had ever heard of Bitcoin or cryptocurrency — Bitcoin only came into existence during the 2008 financial crisis.

What this article envisioned is now coming true.

Beginning this November…

A new international standard for cross-border payments called ISO 20022 will be replacing the 50-year-old SWIFT international and cross-board payments system and implemented using blockchain technology.

As part of this new standard, there are already a handful of cryptocurrencies that are ISO 20022 compliant.

Of notable mentioned is Stellar (XML), whose logo is eerily similar to the logo on the coin of the Pheonix (see below):

While I won’t get into the implications of what this means, such as this new financial system planned at least 33 years in advance, what is of more importance to the investor, is the investment opportunities this new financial system will bring.

What is Stellar (XLM)?

In case you haven’t heard of Steller, it is one of the few IS0 20022 compliant cryptocurrencies which will be part of this new financial system. Stellar is a peer-to-peer (P2P) decentralized network with the purpose of connecting the world’s financial systems and ensuring a fast and transparent protocol for payment providers and financial institutions.

Here is a List of the ISO 20022 compliant cryptocurrencies.

The ISO 20022 standard are the rules and language for cross-border and international payments. It’s the mechanism to connect financial institutions and central banks. However, for this new financial system to be implemented, central banks must also move towards a new ‘digital currency’ (with the help of the blockchain).

CBDCs in Development — Worldwide.

The last piece of this puzzle are Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). A CBDC is a new type of central bank currency that harnesses the power of the blockchain to create a digital currency.

With the standard for international payments (ISO 20022) being implemented in November, Central banks will now have the standards in place for cross-border international payments for their digital currency.

The move to CBDCs is expected to be a step toward replacing the current fiat-based currency and most all countries which have a central bank are already underway towards developing their own CBDC.

China is leading the pack and already has a pilot program in place!

New Global Reserve Currency

The creation of CBDCs will also allow alliances like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa) to create their own ‘alliance currency’, with Russia recently reporting with the help of BRICS, will be creating their own New Global Reserve Currency.

While the ushering in of a new digital currency won’t happen overnight, November marks the beginning of the implementation of the ISO 20022 Standard — notice the year 2022 embedded in the name of the standard.

Even the recently appointed new prime minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak is already publically supporting this new initiative.

A New Financial System is Already Here

Blockchain technology is allowing for the heralding of an entirely new financial system. New cross border payment protocols like ISO 20022 and the creation of Central Bank Digital Currencies is bringing an entirely new financial system to the world.

Whether the 1988 edition of The Economist was prophetic or planned we may never know, but what is certain in we are now living in a new digital financial age.

Link

Below is the original article in its entirety from 1988:

COVER: "GET READY FOR A WORLD CURRENCY"

Title of article: Get Ready for the Phoenix

Source: Economist; 01/9/88, Vol. 306, pp 9-10

THIRTY years from now, Americans, Japanese, Europeans, and people in many other

rich countries, and some relatively poor ones will probably be paying for their shopping

with the same currency. Prices will be quoted not in dollars, yen or D-marks but in, let's

say, the phoenix. The phoenix will be favoured by companies and shoppers because it

will be more convenient than today's national currencies, which by then will seem a

quaint cause of much disruption to economic life in the last twentieth century.

At the beginning of 1988 this appears an outlandish prediction. Proposals for

eventual monetary union proliferated five and ten years ago, but they hardly envisaged

the setbacks of 1987. The governments of the big economies tried to move an inch or two

towards a more managed system of exchange rates - a logical preliminary, it might seem,

to radical monetary reform. For lack of co-operation in their underlying economic

policies they bungled it horribly, and provoked the rise in interest rates that brought on

the stock market crash of October. These events have chastened exchange-rate

reformers. The market crash taught them that the pretence of policy co-operation can be

worse than nothing, and that until real co-operation is feasible (i.e., until governments

surrender some economic sovereignty) further attempts to peg currencies will flounder.

But in spite of all the trouble governments have in reaching and (harder still)

sticking to international agreements about macroeconomic policy, the conviction is

growing that exchange rates cannot be left to themselves. Remember that the Louvre

accord and its predecessor, the Plaza agreement of September 1985, were emergency

measures to deal with a crisis of currency instability. Between 1983 and 1985 the dollar

rose by 34% against the currencies of America's trading partners; since then it has fallen

by 42%. Such changes have skewed the pattern of international comparative advantage

more drastically in four years than underlying economic forces might do in a whole

generation.

In the past few days the world's main central banks, fearing another dollar

collapse, have again jointly intervened in the currency markets (see page 62). Market-

loving ministers such as Britain's Mr. Nigel Lawson have been converted to the cause of

exchange-rate stability. Japanese officials take seriously he idea of EMS-like schemes

for the main industrial economies. Regardless of the Louvre's embarrassing failure, the

conviction remains that something must be done about exchange rates.

Something will be, almost certainly in the course of 1988. And not long after the

next currency agreement is signed it will go the same way as the last one. It will

collapse. Governments are far from ready to subordinate their domestic objectives to the

goal of international stability. Several more big exchange-rate upsets, a few more

stockmarket crashes and probably a slump or two will be needed before politicians are

willing to face squarely up to that choice. This points to a muddled sequence of

emergency followed by a patch-up followed by emergency, stretching out far beyond

2018 - except for two things.

As time passes, the damage caused by currency instability

is gradually going to mount; and the very tends that will make it mount are making the

utopia of monetary union feasible to borrow rather than print money to

finance its budget deficit. With no recourse to the inflation tax, governments and their

creditors would be forced to judge their borrowing and lending plans more carefully than

they do today. This means a big loss of economic sovereignty, but the trends that make

the phoenix so appealing are taking that sovereignty away in any case. Even in a world of

more-or-less floating exchange rates, individual governments have seen their policy

independence checked by an unfriendly outside world.

As the next century approaches, the natural forces that are pushing the world

towards economic integration will offer governments a broad choice. They can go with

the flow, or they can build barricades. Preparing the way for the phoenix will mean

fewer pretended agreements on policy and more real ones. It will mean allowing and

then actively promoting the private-sector use of an international money alongside

existing national monies. That would let people vote with their wallets for the eventual

move to full currency union. The phoenix would probably start as a cocktail of national

currencies, just as the Special Drawing Right is today. In time, though, its value against

national currencies would cease to matter, because people would choose it for its

convenience and the stability of its purchasing power.

The alternative - to preserve policymaking autonomy- would involve a new

proliferation of truly draconian controls on trade and capital flows. This course offers

governments a splendid time. They could manage exchange-rate movements, deploy

monetary and fiscal policy without inhibition, and tackle the resulting bursts of inflation

with prices and incomes polices. It is a growth-crippling prospect. Pencil in the phoenix

for around 2018, and welcome it when it comes.

Limited and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites

or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written

permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for

individual use.

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The Bottom Line

Payments alone won’t transform Global Trade Finance — Trade finance + Tokenized Settlement will.

This is the shift happening underway XDC Network's acquisition of Contour is the quiet catalyst.

Learn how trade finance is being revolutionised:

https://www.reuters.com/press-releases/xdc-ventures-acquires-contour-network-launches-stablecoin-lab-trade-finance-2025-10-22/

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