We often mention Big Tech, and other corporate giants – and not very often in a positive way – but South Korea’s Samsung somehow manages to slip under this radar.
Nonetheless is a veritable business behemoth, with things as diverse as shipbuilding, insurance, and, of course, Android phones.
And Samsung is not a local, but a true global phenomenon in terms of the sheer size of its business interests. So when this particular conglomerate speaks and makes its stance known on any issue – it’s worth listening.
This time, Samsung has spoken about CBDCs (central bank-issued digital currencies). As part of the super-powerful and rich global elites, nobody should be shocked to learn that Samsung likes the idea – and has in fact pledged to help South Korea’s government with offline CBDC payments associated with the program.
(It bears repeating – CBDCs have nothing, other than the digital nature of it all, in common with crypto-currencies. Where the former is centralized, the latter is not, to cite but the most significant difference.)
Needless to say, South Korea’s central bank is already developing the digital version of its centralized fiat money. But now, more work apparently needs to be done to make sure this scheme works seamlessly offline as well.
Enter Samsung – what a surprise – and it has now become the country’s partner in finding ways to make this happen. A memorandum of understanding was concluded in mid-April to allow this research to take place, reports citing Korean press say.
“The latest MOU (memorandum of understanding) is aimed at testing the South Korean CBDC’s potential to conduct remittances and payments using near-field communication (NFC) on Samsung mobile devices instead of the internet,” writes Cointelegraph.
The criticism of CBDCs worldwide stems from that tech giving governments of various profiles the ability to introduce even more tight control over how the people in these countries are spending their money, and, when all’s said and done, are behaving.
They might need this fine grained information for advertising – or for political purposes, in case of, say, a political protest.
