Prospects for Further Development of the mBridge Project: Rebalancing Political Leadership

Abstract

Until recently, due to the liquidity and stability of the US dollar, the bulk of international settlements were made in this currency, which strengthened the economy and political weight of the United States. However, the development of digital technologies has begun to determine the contours of the emergence of a new architecture of the global financial system, and various options for using digital currencies for cross-border settlements are currently being tested around the world. The mBridge project (the stakeholder is China), which reached the minimum viable product (MVP) stage in 2023, was among the most important projects for the exchange of central currencies of national central banks. In Russia, even at the stage of the threat of disconnecting the Russian Federation from SWIFT, the issue of creating an alternative payment system on a new technological platform was discussed at a high political level. The article, on the one hand, considers the prospects for Russia to create its own project, taking into account maintaining the focus on the topic of technological and, digital sovereignty, and on the other hand, an assessment of possible options for the development of the Chinese mBridge project is carried out. In addition, an expert assessment is given of the possibility of the conceptual influence of the integration of such projects on the existing global financial infrastructure, including attempts to abandon the established international monetary system and a significant rebalancing of the political influence associated with it.