Analysis

BRICS Blockchain Payment System 'Game-Changer' Amid Unstoppable Dedollarization - Expert

The global trend to abandon the increasingly weaponized US dollar has been gaining steam. A new currency transaction platform being developed by BRICS is set to further advance the digitalization trend and transition to other currencies in mutual settlements, the financial expert noted.
Sputnik
Moscow’s decision to create a new BRICS blockchain-based payment system is a "game-changing" development for a multipolar world, Christopher Douglas Emms, head of the Brokerage Division, LM Investments, told Sputnik on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

"I think it's a huge and significant development, because […] blockchain is an immutable payment. And what that means is it can't be messed with. It also removes any element, really, of corruption, because when you make that payment, it's totally transparent. And once it's made, no one can ever delete it. It has an online digital footprint that anyone can look up, which is totally transparent and also secure and fast," the expert noted.

As part of BRICS’ efforts to ditch the weaponized US dollar in settlements, Emms weighed in on the increased talk of a new BRICS currency emerging, adding that there was no clarity yet as to "what form that will take."
As all economies are different, the expert added he is no fan of a "one-currency-fits-all" approach. He recalled the "disaster that the euro has been."

"I think we may see a currency that is backed on a basket of different BRICS nation currencies, be that the Russian ruble, the Chinese renminbi, the Indian rupee, the South African rand, these kind of large economies coming together and forming something that will essentially allow everyone to clear payments between each other in a lot better way," the financial analyst said.

The BRICS payment system would be the final nail in the coffin of the "unstoppable" dedollarization trend, the expert explained, adding that the US greenback "has nothing that backs it," and "there's no commodity that underlies it." Furthermore, Washington's greenback printing spree is one of the factors driving the trend.

“The US dollar has nothing that backs it. There's no commodity that underlies it, which then allows the Federal Reserve to print as much as possible. That, coupled with the large amount of debt per capita that the US is experiencing […] in the past 20 or so years, are making it really, in my view, unsustainable,” the pundit said.

He likened the dollar to a house of cards that will inevitably collapse once people stop using it.
Independent sovereign nations should not have other countries such as the US “telling them what to do or actually seeing what business they do with each other,” he added.
As for the manner in which the Telegram-linked TON cryptocurrency collapsed recently in the wake of Pavel Durov’s arrest, the pundit pointed to how it was already bouncing back. He suggested that it just shows the robustness of Telegram as a company, which has become “an institution.”
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“Everyone around the world uses Telegram because it has now overtaken WhatsApp and all these other brands that have basically, we've found out, been giving all of our data and all our messages away to the American authorities.”

Telegram is a "transparent and secure system," and "people aren't spying on it," with its co-founder and CEO "willing to go to prison for that fact," Emms noted. He voiced the opinion that Telegram’s cryptocurrency wallet function will expand, and that "the sky's the limit" for TON.
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