Saudi Arabia exited mBridge. This project is China-led cross-border CBDC platform. U.S. policy circles have been watching it closely; an FT report directly points to Washington’s regulatory pressure as the reason. The technology didn’t fail—geopolitics forced a choice.
On one side, Scott Bessent publicly endorsed dollar hegemony on the same day; on the other, the ECB built its own Pontes platform and used central bank funding to buy tokenized bonds. mBridge wants a slice of the cross-border settlement pie. Once Saudi leaves, it effectively cuts down the room for imagination about this channel by a segment. I don’t think this is that Saudi doesn’t want efficiency—it has done the math: the cost of offending the dollar system is far higher than the savings in transaction fees.
So don’t read this as a failure of the CBDC technical roadmap. From start to finish, it’s been a battle over settlement authority. $BTC
On one side, Scott Bessent publicly endorsed dollar hegemony on the same day; on the other, the ECB built its own Pontes platform and used central bank funding to buy tokenized bonds. mBridge wants a slice of the cross-border settlement pie. Once Saudi leaves, it effectively cuts down the room for imagination about this channel by a segment. I don’t think this is that Saudi doesn’t want efficiency—it has done the math: the cost of offending the dollar system is far higher than the savings in transaction fees.
So don’t read this as a failure of the CBDC technical roadmap. From start to finish, it’s been a battle over settlement authority. $BTC
