See this article from Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/global-markets-bis-urgent-2022-12-05/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-05/-missing-65-trillion-in-derivatives-dollar-debt-sparks-concern?srnd=premium&leadSource=uverify%20wall
Basically when a financial institution wants to invest in another country, they have to carry out a currency swap so that they’re investing in the country’s fiat currency. It’s incredible hard for auditors to keep track of currency swaps. Huge blind spot, especially since currency swaps account for 80 some trillion dollars. For perspective, global GDP is roughly 100 trillion and US GDP is roughly 25 trillion.
To be honest, I don’t know why it’s so hard to audit currency swaps, but I take the BIS’s word on authority with this shot over the bow. I’m not preaching a doomsday thesis, but more so express the possibility that something could go seriously wrong with this situation; given how much money we’re talking about, and humans being humans and their penchant for corruption, currency swaps could be a source of distress in the future should there be unsavory players meddling in the pot. We’re not talking FTX level money here with a few billion. Blind spots on the scale of a few billion is bad. Blind spots on the scale of tens of trillions might prove to be the biggest instance of gross negligence in human history. That opens the possibility for something to go seriously wrong.
How do you think ethereum could help solve this transparency problem?
