Unicoin or the Universal Monetary Unit - Another Step Toward a Surveillance State

A recent announcement following the International Monetary Fund's 2023 Spring Meeting held in Washington D.C. adds another dimension to the looming implementation of a worldwide digital central bank currency or CBDC.  

  

I need to provide my readers with background on the body responsible for the announcement since, like me, it quite likely that you have never heard of the Digital Currency Monetary Authority or DCMA.  On its website, the DCMA, a private organization, describes itself as:

 

"....a world leader in the advocacy of digital currency innovations for monetary authorities. Our mission is to enable trade globalization through the monetary integration of international payments and settlements while strengthening national economies monetary sovereignty.

 

The first wave of cryptographic cash was designed for public untrusted networks. The DCMA reimagines the next wave of cryptographic innovations engineered for adoption by central banks, retail and commercial banks, Fintech, governments, and cryptocurrency exchanges."

 

Membership in the DCMA includes commercial and retail banks, central banks, sovereign states and other financial institutions, none of which I have been able to specifically identify because the organization does not provide details about itself.

  

Here is the DCMA's LinkedIn page:

 

When you Google the organization's name, other than its recent announcement and its rather uninformative website appear among the results.  The only employee that I've been able to find is Darrell Hubbard, DCMA's Executive Director, the gentleman responsible for creating the next important step in the global move to CBDCs:

 

Now, at long last, here is the announcement made by the Digital Currency Monetary Authority (DCMA):

 

 

Here is a key quote:

 

"The DCMA introduces Universal Monetary Unit as Crypto 2.0 because it innovates a new wave of cryptographic technologies for realizing a digital currency public monetary system with a widespread adoption framework encompassing use cases for all constituencies in a global economy."

 

Basically, the DCMA has launched a Central Bank Digital Currency it calls the Universal Monetary Unit (UMU) also known as Unicoin which functions like a CBDC to enforce banking regulations and protect the integrity of the international banking system and has the capability to transact in any legal tender settlement currency.  DCMA claims that it is a new wave of cryptographic technologies for implementation of a digital currency public monetary system.  Under proposed UMU Model Law legislation which is being drafted by several sovereign states, Unicoin will function as a complementary money commodity for the store of value and will not be used as legal tender for negotiating international trade agreements or domestic prices.  It is being designed to assist the IMF achieve its mandate of providing economic and financial stability to its member states.

 

Here is a summary page from the DCMA's website about Crypto 2.0 aka Universal Monetary Unit aka Unicoin, noting that like all CBDCs, it touts the ability to prevent money laundering:

 

 

Here's what Tobias Adrian, Financial Counsellor and Director of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the IMF had to say about Unicoin:

 

"Cross-border payments can be slow, expensive, and risky. In today’s world of payments, counterparties in different jurisdictions rely on costly trusted relationships to offset the lack of a common settlement asset together with common rules and governance. 

 

“But imagine if a multilateral platform existed that could improve cross-border payments—at the same time transforming foreign exchange transactions, risk sharing, and more generally, financial contracting.”

It's always about speeding up and making cross-border payments less expensive with these people, isn't it?

 

Unicoin/UMU/Crypto 2.0 would appear to be just another step taken toward our dystopic future where our every move will be watched and recorded and our behaviours controlled by those who ought not to be in control.  I must say, while I have been anticipating the implementation of a central bank digital currency ecosystem, this is all happening far more quickly than I would have guessed.