12 Countries Are Now Considering Central Bank Digital Currencies (qz.com) 40
"Officials at central banks are considering how and whether to create a digital form of cash," reports Qz:
As money gets swept up by tech innovation, government authorities are taking a closer look at old fashioned notes and coins. More than a dozen countries are either researching, piloting, or, like China, have ongoing work in place for central bank digital currencies, according to a Bank for International Settlements report published today. "Central banks around the world are investigating a rich set of prototypes," the BIS wrote...
While physical cash isn't yet endangered in most places, the experience of a few countries, notably Sweden, China, and even to some extent the UK, shows that a world with much less cash usage is increasingly possible. That's why the BIS, sometimes called the central bank for central banks, published a report sketching out possible designs for a peer-to-peer central bank digital currency.
While physical cash isn't yet endangered in most places, the experience of a few countries, notably Sweden, China, and even to some extent the UK, shows that a world with much less cash usage is increasingly possible. That's why the BIS, sometimes called the central bank for central banks, published a report sketching out possible designs for a peer-to-peer central bank digital currency.
I wonder if there will be business consolidation (Score:2)
And a new, cool mark logo representing the consortium provided along with your continued ability to buy or sell anything.
Right hand or forehead, completely up to you. They'll undoubtedly respect your right to choose freely.
Governments should take this over (Score:3)
You want to store your money in something that's got the stability of a German Mark in 1923 or a Venezuelan Bolivar in 2019? Be my guest. I'll store my wealth in something that's got real heft behind it. Something that won't suddenly evaporate overnight. Something that's backed by a central bank.
A lot of people are going to lose their shirts while we transition to digital payments. We gave the power of currency to governments for a reason. No smaller body is capable of handling it.
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The other thing is privacy.
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A stable, central government in a stable, western country is literally the ONLY type of entity that I would trust
Governments of stable western countries are deeply in debt and have big incentives to monetize those debts by devaluing their currencies.
Not some guy going by a made-up Japanese name.
The point of bitcoin is that you don't need to trust any single person or entity.
You want to store your money in something that's got the stability of a German Mark in 1923
The German Mark of 1923 was destroyed by the policies of stable Western governments.
We gave the power of currency to governments for a reason.
We didn't give them the power. They took it. The most stable currencies are those that have institutional protection from government.
First, governments will issue their own digital currencies. Then they will
Re:Governments should take this over (Score:5, Insightful)
At least a government is nominally accountable to the people. I'm the first person to admit that governments are FAR from perfect, but I'll take an imperfect government over a lord-of-the-flies system.
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At least a government is nominally accountable to the people.
40% of Americans can't come up with $400 to pay an unexpected expense.
98% of Americans own a TV.
Having a financial system accountable to these people is why our national debt is $23 Trillion.
Re:Governments should take this over (Score:4, Insightful)
Governments of stable western countries are deeply in debt and have big incentives to monetize those debts by devaluing their currencies.
Sweden who is the forerunner in this has a government debt to gdp ratio at about 41% compared to US fed debt of about 106%, so no, that's not it.Their reason for a digital currency is ensuring the efficiency and safety of the payment system and deposits outside of the banking system. You can read about it at the Swedish Riksbank page in english https://www.riksbank.se/en-gb/... [riksbank.se]
Re:Governments should take this over (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of people are going to lose their shirts while we transition to digital payments. We gave the power of currency to governments for a reason. No smaller body is capable of handling it.
I agree that no smaller body is capable, but I question whether even most governments can be trusted with the task. They can't even get e-voting right - how can we expect them to implement e-currency? When I think of the abuses and losses we've seen from holders of Bitcoin, along with the ever-growing list of data breaches that includes governments, the thought of countries relying on digital currency scares the crap out of me.
I predict that if governments force a move to digital currency and get rid of paper money, a whole raft of unofficial currencies (both digital and paper) will proliferate. Many people simply won't tolerate the monitoring and tracking of every financial transaction they make; even those who use Google and Facebook without a second thought, may balk at being unable to spend ANY money without governments and/or banks knowing about it.
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This!
I hardly ever have cash - but like the fact that tomorrow I could liquidate everything and store all of my money under the mattress to be spent where and how I wish.
My problem with digital currency is twofold:
1. Where you spend is traceable,
2. there has to be a gate keeper to the platform being used to transact. In the case of organisations like paypal, it has been proven already that if certain gatekeepers do not like "you" (your politics etc) they can make transacting very hard. My cash knows no poli
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Your cash also continuously evaporates due to inflation. Putting your money in a mattress is probably the worst of your choices.
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Where you spend is traceable
Some of us think this is a bonus! But we'll never see the complete elimination of cash. Organizations can't function without some mechanism for paying bribes.
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It really depends on what problems the digital currency is supposed to solve. I would love a solution that makes being a digital nomad easier— being able to directly make an international transfer and eliminate all of the intermediary steps. It might even have the added benefit that I could do it cheaply and with minimal hassles.
But, when you create a winner you also create a loser...
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Digital currency, to track every cent spent, who has it when and of course in any dispute with the controlling you are economically digitally shut down, any one sides with you, they are shut down. All about autocratic control and enslavement of the population and just for fun corporate taxes on every cent spent, they will compulsorily get their share, which was your share.
I would not trust any society with digital only capitalism, it will be slavery for the majority and make no mistake. The elites will also
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I don't see any point. We already have a "digital currency". Other than actual Bank Notes in your pocket, *everything else* is a digital currency (numbers in a computer database). People get paid by "direct deposit of digital currency" into their database records. They pay bills by removing some numbers from hither and increasing them thither.
We have had "digital currency" for quite a while and "digital payments" also (except in the United States of America which is technologically retarded).
This is all
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Seems like a dumb idea (Score:1)
Defeats the whole purpose of digital currencies. (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of digital currencies like Bitcoin is to have something that some government agency or central bank can't inflate by printing more - and that the users can trust to not inflate. (The secondary point is that, like precious metals, once the tokens are mined/minted it can be operated by a distributed collection of users without the ongoing intervention of central agency in every transaction.)
How can uses trust that a central-bank operated digital currency isn't subject to such manipulation? Even if the protocol is open they have SUCH an incentive to inflate the currency that there will always be the suspicion that the protocol contains some deep back door. This distrust can be expected to impact the currency's perceived value.
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If that's the point, then they've all failed spectacularly. The US dollar is more stable than every single digital currency out there.
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If that's the point, then they've all failed spectacularly.
Hardly. You're conflating "Not subject to inflation by printing arbitrary amounts of additional money." with "Stable value."
Wild fluctuations are exactly what you expect with any thinly traded commodity subject to intermittent public scrutiny and fads. Especially those with no other inherent value than their scarcity.
Well mining *is* inflating. (Score:2)
Obviously they failed spectacularly, when somebody can still just create money out of thin air.
It is not exactly an easy task, to keep the the equation 1 unit of money = 1 unit of work upright.
Because 1 unit of money is only as much worth, as the *worth* of that 1 unit of work.
And for "mining", to you and me, that worth is zero.
Or are you gonna work for hours and hours, for somebody who just ran a bunch of GPUs to waste energy, while sitting on his fat ass? lol
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Inflation is not the only threat to a currency. Deflation can be just as dangerous.
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Inflation is not the only threat to a currency. Deflation can be just as dangerous.
Not to the holders of the currency.
(It can be disastrous to those who are committed to pay off with it later when they don't have it now. But that's true for a sort position in any commodity. Money is not special in that regard.)
Typo (Score:2)
But that's true for a sort position in any commodity.
Typo: SHORT position (of course).
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It's a disaster to anyone who uses the currency for trading rather than speculation. If you want to sell something for bitcoin in a deflationary environment, people are going to be very unwilling to part with their bitcoin - the longer they postpone spending it, the more it's worth. Everyone hoards, no-one spends.
Yeah, bullshit. (Score:2)
They still gotta eat and live etc.
So they still gotta spend.
And spending just for spending's sake is just as harmful as hoarding.
Here's what Slashdot said in 2011 about Bitcoin (Score:2)
https://slashdot.org/story/11/... [slashdot.org]
Re: DONOT GIVE LEGITIMACY 2 CRYPTOCURRENCY SCAMS!! (Score:2)
That is literally what the ampersand stands for.
Just like "+" stands for "plus" (not "and").
Although this is a quite unusual use.
But you gotta admit, it's more efficient.
Too bad it comes from such a dumb source. But Shakespeare totally would have approved of it, and of "y'all".
What matters, is only that it is understood, and that it is unambiguous.
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"Isn't printing & issuing your own currency and/or stocks illegal & for really good reasons???"
Printing / issuing your own currency and/or stocks is not illegal ...
One good "glitch" and it's all gone (Score:3)
*already coding up a glitch* (Score:2)
*rubs hands* This gon be good ... :D
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Money is already mostly digital. The cash you have in your wallet is just a fraction of what you have in your bank account (I hope). Hackers are already a risk.
The proposed "digital currencies" closely model the infrastructure that is already inplace but with more cryptographic stuff enabling things like signed transactions, faster transactions due to less double checking and book keeping etc.
https://docs.corda.net/_static... [corda.net]
https://docs.corda.net/_static... [corda.net]
Yet more surveillance! (Score:2)
I don't know why some of these so-called 'governments' don't just cut to the chase and mandate implanting GPS trackers in all their citizens from birth.
Central bank digital currencies (Score:3)
It's gonna be an amazing time for black hats! (Score:2)
Watch the markets crash and burn WHILE crashing and burning, as soon as this becomes implemented.
I, for one, am already transitioning to independent valuables. (Which will stay valuable and can be used to pay things, once the silly currencies are unreliable.)
Most Money Has Been Digital (Score:1)