Harvard University Stages 'Digital Currency Wars' Crisis Simulation

Harvard University's Kennedy School carried out a live simulation of a White House National Security Council meeting on Nov. 19, featuring former senior administration officials and thought leaders.

The "Digital Currency Wars" event examined a potential future scenario, following a North Korean missile test, potentially enabled by China's proposed digital yuan.

The simulation was set two years in the future, with China's digital yuan having theoretically been launched 20 months previously.

The digital yuan has risen to not only dominate the Chinese domestic payments space, but its ease of use and the Belt and Road Initiative is seeing adoption spread across South East Asia.

The game includes a newsflash of a North Korean missile test, more advanced than Washington had believed, and thought to have been funded through U.S. sanction avoidance via the use of the digital yuan.

"We will not successfully starve North Korea economically without the cooperation of China, and certainly not if it is their objective to see us fail."

The more forward-thinking attendees felt that more should be done to ensure the U.S. had a similar digital currency capacity, to resuscitate its financial power.

This included the option of putting diplomatic pressure on China to cooperate, use electronic intelligence to highlight North Korea's sanction breaking, or develop its own digital dollar competitor.

As American policymakers increasingly engage with the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, several lawmakers have called for rapid regulation and legal certainty for the nascent technology and digital assets, so as not to fall too far behind more lenient jurisdictions.

A Chinese blockchain investor recently stated that a digital yuan is in the advanced stages of development, and is likely to launch with the next six to 12 months.