CBDC Proponent Mark Carney Makes Bid for Canadian Liberal Party Leadership

• Justin Trudeau has stepped down as Canadian PM.
• Mark Carney was governor of Canada’s central bank from 2008 to 2013 and the Bank of England’s boss from 2013 to 2020.
• Carney has mixed views on crypto but believes that CBDCs offer consumers many benefits.

Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England (BoE) and the Bank of Canada (BoC), has been a prominent voice in modern economics and could become the next Canadian prime minister (PM).

This may not bode well for crypto as Carney has famously said that Bitcoin (BTC) isn’t a store of value and is a big fan of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Carney’s Canada

Just a week after Justin Trudeau announced that he would be resigning as PM, Carney, an economic heavyweight, declared his leadership bid.

He says the Canadian system isn’t working, citing the frequently raised concerns about the nation’s economic downturn, a cost of living and housing crisis, and climate woes.

“I’m doing this because Canada is the best country in the world, but it could still be even better,” Carney said.

Mark Carney is a storied individual in the world of finance. After serving five years as the head of Canada’s central bank, Carney immediately transitioned into becoming the BoE’s first-ever non-British governor in 2013.

For seven years, he presided over one of the U.K.’s oldest institutions, which he is credited for modernizing. He also gained a reputation for making frequent media appearances and overseeing the U.K. economy through political woes such as Brexit.

However, should he become the party’s leader and perhaps the next Canadian PM following this year’s election, Canada may undergo radical economic shifts as Carney is a major proponent of CBDCs and is not big on crypto.

Crypto, Stablecoins, and CBDCs

In 2018, when cryptocurrencies reached the mainstream during the initial coin offering (ICO) boom, Carney made statements on BTC that they had aged like milk. Namely, this quote from a QA session at London Regent’s University:

“It has pretty much failed thus far on … the traditional aspects of money. It is not a store of value because it is all over the map. Nobody uses it as a medium of exchange,” Carney said.

Furthermore, Carney has argued that stablecoins give too much power to big tech, and if they become integrated into the global economy, they pose significant structural risks.

In his 2021 speech to the Bank of International Settlement (BIS), Carney explained that stablecoins could fragment monetary system liquidity and are “ultimately an appendage” to existing monetary systems “and not a game changer.”

“It is not clear why a single CBDC wouldn’t perform better,” he said.

Carney is a major proponent of CBDCs. He has previously noted that he envisions a world where CBDCs are at the core of the economy.

He believes they offer greater security and user benefits than cryptos and stablecoins. His views are similar to that of outgoing PM Justin Trudeau, who has been critical of cryptocurrencies and favored implementing a Canadian dollar CBDC, much to the dismay of Canadians.

Following the controversial ice trucker protests in which Trudeau’s government froze both the bank accounts and crypto transactions of protesting truckers, Canadians were concerned with Trudeau’s cynical resolution, which the public viewed as a tyrannical abuse of power.

Trudeau is also a proponent of CBDCs and espoused anti-crypto rhetoric in the past.

Ideologically, Carney is likely only interested in improving the economic conditions of his beloved country. Regardless, a vote for Carney is a vote for CBDCs, which Conservative opposition leader  Pierre Poilievre is staunchly against.