IMF’s CBDC UMU a challenger for the crypto world?

International Monetary Fund unveiled Unicoin: A global, legal tender settlement CBDC last week at their Spring Meeting 2023. The CBDC known as the Universal Monetary Unit (UMU), will be symbolized by the ANSI Character Ü.

Ü, is legally a money commodity, can transact in any legal tender settlement currency, and functions like a CBDC to enforce banking regulations and to protect the financial integrity of the international banking system.

The functioning structure remains the same, as Banks can attach SWIFT Codes and bank accounts to a UMU digital currency wallet and transaction SWIFT-like cross-border payments over digital currency rails completely bypassing the correspondent banking system at best-priced wholesale FX rates and with instantaneous real-time settlement. The whitepaper for UMU can be accessed at https://umu.cash/

In the proposed legislation, UMU should not be used as a legal tender for negotiating domestic prices or international trade agreements.

Will this be of any effect to cryptocurrencies? Our take is No, since it follows the traditional banking structure which involves routing using SWIFT protocol and CBDC is more centralized.