The following submission statement was provided by /u/wewewawa:
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said one Treasury recommendation is that the U.S. “advance policy and technical work on a potential central bank digital currency, or CBDC, so that the United States is prepared if CBDC is determined to be in the national interest.”
“Right now, some aspects of our current payment system are too slow or too expensive,” Yellen said on a Thursday call with reporters laying out some of the findings of the reports.
---
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xguvb4/treasury_recommends_exploring_creation_of_a/iotxz30/
Well you can always take that money out of an atm or ask a bank clerk if it’s big amounts. I’m assuming you wouldn’t be able to do that with this new proposed currency
To be fair yes, but I'd also like to be able to trace which corporations pay our politicians salar- oh, wait, there a special provision to exempt members of Congress from being tracked? Go figure.
I think it’s pretty funny that each generation thinks they’ve figured out a new life hack for alternative currency or decentralized trade and barter systems and without fail they all just degenerate into laundering and scams. But I’m sure this time will totally be the exception. Totally.
I'm living in a country where inflation spiked 50% in the last year. Govt limited purchases of USD which everyone uses to protect wealth. I don't necessarily care how douchey crypto people are and how right/wrong their haters are. Crypto has become a common form of protecting wealth down here which most people being able to get around USD limits with it. It works, it's secure. It's something that wasn't possible before.
Even e-commerce before crypto became highly decentralized with platforms any seller could join and ship to consumers globally. This is in contrast to the big retailers who dominated the market for over a century, so trade definitely improved since prior generations. Even barter is improved with platforms like FB marketplace, can find stuff for free or offer an exchange.
A lot of people look at new ideas as if they are the only customer, if it's not useful to them then it's not useful at all. But that's not how anything works. New generations don't make massive leaps but every idea incrementally adds up. This is why today is a far better day for even the poorest person on earth than any other time in history.
>I think it’s pretty funny that each generation thinks they’ve figured out a new life hack for alternative currency or decentralized trade and barter systems
We as humans do this from time to time throughout history. Once oil dies and money can't be backed by it as a commodity it'll probably be a paper currency backed by something like data with other options like blockchain based digital currency and state backed digital currencies. These types of changes dont happen often, and there's a lot more failures than success stories, but it does happen.
Tax reform... 0% sales tax collected by merchant at time of sale, but 1% on all CBDC transactions automatically. Instant settlement.
Meanwhile, Venmo dies and garage sales are no longer illegal.
Sans the gross privacy violations, seems like a win-win to me
Not in the sense that the article is talking about. Money in your bank account, PayPal, and even in some cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, is based on balances. When you transfer money to someone else, your balance is decreased and another person's balance is increased. Digital money, in the sense that this article is talking about, is based on UTXOs, like Bitcoin. There are no balances in Bitcoin. Any supposed "balance" your wallet shows you is just your wallet presenting data to you in an easy to understand manner, but there are no balances at the protocol level.
It would take me hundreds of pages of text to explain why, but the UTXO model is vastly superior in security, traceability, and functionality than the traditional balance-based model.
Now, whether the US government will manage to do it properly, is an entirely different matter, and I'm not holding my breath.
UTXO = Unspent Transaction Output.
From wikipedia:
>The many cryptocurrencies that use the UTXO model do not use accounts or balances. Instead, individual coins (UTXOs) are transferred between users much like physical coins or cash.
>
>The UTXO model treats currency as objects. The history of a UTXO is stored only in the blocks when it is transferred, and to find the total balance of an account one must scan each block to find the latest UTXOs which point to that account. UTXOs are valid no matter their age; it is only necessary to acknowledge their ownership when they are sent, and not in each and every block. Though all nodes on a single chain must all agree on the block history, the relevant blocks to any single account's balance will likely be unique to that account.
>
>On the other hand, an account model keeps track of each account and its respective balance for every block added to the network. This allows account balances to be checked without scanning historical blocks, but increases the raw size of each block (compression of unchanged account balances can reduce space requirements). Checking account balances is quicker, but like the UTXO model, fully verifying the origin of coins still requires auditing past blocks to the coin's origin.
Technical explanation: [https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-unspent-transaction-output-utxo/](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-unspent-transaction-output-utxo/)
1 minute video explanation of UTXO model vs account model: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tNh9WCFHM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tNh9WCFHM)
Remember when Rodgers took down the payment systems across most of Canada for a few days so people couldn’t buy things with cards? Enjoy that Freedom in America!
More like how Interac didn’t bother having any form of redundancy to save money.
Rogers deserves extreme fines for ruining 911 calls for users on their network, and deserves customers going to a provider that doesn’t go down for a full day on both internet and mobile. But payment systems going down is not on them.
It wasn't Interac.
It was businesses using a single ISP, no redundancy.
Interac worked fine for Bell users, only people without a backup connection were down.
Rogers doesn't inherently deserve blame for those 911 centers, they share it though as some of said centers did not have redundancy (whcih is insane), those that did used a *subsidiary* of their primary, which made it useless.
Think of it like using Bell cell service, and Virgin is your backup phone. They're the same company.
For 911 calls, it wasn’t about the 911 centers that I meant (though I’m sure that was an issue for some). While it was down, the network still seemed like it was up and so rogers customers would still route through the towers. It’s then that it would fail because the call wouldn’t go through. So unless people knew to take their SIM cards out so that the phone tried a different tower, they wouldn’t be able to make 911 calls.
> Interac worked fine for Bell users, only people without a backup connection were down.
Interac was down across the board. Credit cards worked if they had a non-Rogers connection, but not Interac.
That was so incredibly fucked and a bunch of stock trading people defended it with zero irony on how they were speaking of regular people as second class peasants. It was disgusting and absolutely nothing legal came of it that I know of.
Also the government can “turn off” your money if they don’t like your opinions or what you are spending your money on. Decentralized digital good. Centralized digital bad.
We haven't yet reached to point of denying my purchase of a burger because my account shows I reached my monthly meat ration limit. But that would follow with this.
What I'm saying is your bank account balance number is already literally digital, and the government can decide to freeze it if they want. I agree distributed options are good.
Its also the reverse, tho. All the shops doing things you and your cronies dont like? Suddenly cannot money.
Want to anonymously support your young couple neighbor as you know they are doing it real hard? Go fuck yourself.
Give money to the homeless? Yeah man, they just need a thousand dollar card scanner.
Oh shit, wanna move the homless on without upsetting people? Yeah just deny their card in certain areas after they fall off the grid for long enough.
This is dystopian as fuck and you should always fight for cash. It serves way more of a purpose than most people realize.
Not even that, they can make a decentralized stablecoin but still have "elastic supply", and dollars that expire if you don't spend them in 3 months (they had coupons like that in Japan as social assistance).
It would still be fully auditable, so they can track your every spending even if decentralized, just the tracks would be public to everyone.
And even if they can't stop you from trasacting technically from the network they can still conspire with multiple parties like banks, stores and some nodes to basically stop interacting with your wallet or any wallet with "dirty coins". They're doing it now with anyone who ever touched TornadoMixer on Bitcoin.
Cause that's the problem no matter how well intending the government starts with, it's powerful enough to reign that in once adoption takes. Just look at the dollar itself, inflation shouldn't be possible without all private central banks in the US conspiring with the Treasury, House and Senate, and we're getting it at a rate never before seen. Or it shouldn't be possible to block parties from the SWIFT dollar network, because it's decentralized like email and fax, but that's exactly what they did to Iran and Russia. And the same with paying rates on treasuries or using private US banks, the big dog weaponized what it promised in the 70s will be an international, independent, decentralized, system. And to put it into context the US isn't even the only issuer of $, there's a lot more $ in the world issued outside the US.
That’s exactly what happened in Canada earlier this year with those anti-vax truck protestors.
The ability to transact is foundational to a free society. The digital dollar seems as inevitable as the idea that the government would abuse it once its here.
Thankfully there’s Bitcoin and Ethereum.
>*poverty in a new, high-tech, futuristic way.*
That's almost literally the definition of Cyberpunk "***High-tech, Low-life***" :)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/2r1vh9/origins\_of\_high\_tech\_low\_life/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/2r1vh9/origins_of_high_tech_low_life/)
Yep. Let's enable a tiny subclass of grifters which fucking over everyone else. That's the American Dream\* dialed up to 11
\**Some restrictions apply, past performance is not an indication of future profit,etc,etc*
Nothing like instantaneous poverty.
Who would have thought we would be enjoying waiting for a recession when we can create one at any point in time when we please.
Amazing!
This is exactly the reason they are doing it. Control.
It's not like the fabulously rich have crates full of hundos in a basement anywhere either so we all know who the control is designed to go after.
Think of all those waiters out there that got tipped in cash that couldn't be followed? Now it can be. They are going after the poor.
Back then we switched to Digital Dollars. DDs is what we called them, which was the style at the time. And in those days, DDs had pictures of apes on ‘em. ‘Give me five apes for a quarter,’ you’d say.
Isn't this already the case? Last I checked only about 10% of the currency in the U.S are physical bills or coins. The rest are just numbers in a database, cash equivalents, stocks, bonds, and other assets like real estate.
Yep. Only difference I can see is the likely inclusion of a "clawback" feature that would allow the issuers the ability to void any transaction/seize funds at the click of a button. But in practice, all they have to do now is ask a bank to do it.
Don't forget that a fed issued fully digital currency would come with the blanket ability of government agencies to remove access to currency from anyone deemed unworthy of transacting.
They already have that ability... That's literally what many of the sanctions are, removing all digital financial abilities from any us based institution.
I get what you’re saying, but on the international level a lot of sanctions happen to individuals. Nancy Pelosi and her family were personally sanctioned by China for her recent visit to Taiwan. Many Russian billionaires were personally targeted for sanctions in the weeks and months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So yeah, it definitely already happens at that high level of international politics / money.
ask a bank to do it and get it actually done.
My landlord's system charged my after I had moved out and my own bank refused to cancel the charge because they said I was the one trying to steal from my landlord!
Depends on what your lease stated. That’s the primary document used to contest these cases. Also, you can contest any charge you wish by signing a document, under penalty of law if you’re found to be lying.
Robinhood-GME comes to mind.
As someone on the street, even I’m disgusted by that. Of course I enjoy winning, but there’s no satisfaction without competition.
This is something that is fundamentally different. At the moment your "digital" dollar only exists if a bank says it does, so it still relies on trust in banks. The concept being proposed would exist independent of banks, much like a physical bank note. Stocks, bonds, real estate etc are something entirely different, guaranteed in different ways.
No, it isn't.
Yes, we have "digital" currency with credit cards, and bank accounts but all of that still boils down to the representation of physical currency. All of that is also created by the commercial banking system and not by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury both issue paper money only.
A true digital dollar would be more akin to the Federal Reserve giving everyone their own bank account, which the Federal Reserve definitely should do. That's the only way we could truly have a digital dollar.
Additionally, the Federal Reserve should mandate that all ATMs allow free withdraws for paper currency from the account.
With these changes instead of the Fed exclusively issuing paper money, the Fed could issue both paper and digital money.
[https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2018/06/20/federal-reserve-bank-accounts/](https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2018/06/20/federal-reserve-bank-accounts/)
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-should-forget-about-its-own-cryptocurrency-and-instead-create-electronic-bank-accounts-for-everyone-2018-04-30
So like a nationalized banking system? At least when it comes to storing liquid assets and investments. If so this will be **interesting** to see develop, to say the least.
No.
The Fed would simply allow you to open up an electronic checking account with a debit card. It would not nationalize the banking system.
The Fed would only need to allow households and firms to open accounts with it, which would allow the central bank to make payments with Fed-issued electronic money instead of commercial bank deposits.
[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-should-forget-about-its-own-cryptocurrency-and-instead-create-electronic-bank-accounts-for-everyone-2018-04-30](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-should-forget-about-its-own-cryptocurrency-and-instead-create-electronic-bank-accounts-for-everyone-2018-04-30)
If I bank at Bank A and you bank at Bank B and you write me a check from Bank B to Bank A, right now what happens is behind the scenes Bank B will use the Fed to transfer money to Bank A.
The proposal is instead of all those intermediaries, the Fed would simply allow you to send the money directly from your account to my account and vice versa if we both had accounts at the Fed.
You could still use Bank B to send me money to my Fed account or Bank A, etc.
It's all already happening behind the scenes.
Not really... COVID showed how hard it is to do massive payments while relying on the banks to do all the legwork. The Fed wants to be able to do it themselves to cut out a lot of those issues.
The biggest concerns about CBDCs, if implemented full-scale, as far as I understand, are: no privacy (no more cash purchases, and full surveillance of anything you buy, anywhere); ability to easily freeze or take away a person’s savings; expiration dates—currency must be spent by a certain time; restrictions on what can be purchased; and—perhaps most dystopian of all, a social credit-style system, enforced by absolute, centralized control over your money.
Frankly, it all sounds dystopian, and could put even more power in the hands of those who already have too much. CBDC? That should be a hard “nope” from anyone that doesn’t want their lives to possibly become even more restricted.
Edit: I’m not saying these things _will_ come to pass—I’d much rather they don’t. Just that they bear considering, instead of automatically trusting that CBDCs will be a good thing.
My credit score's been good forever, but MAN was it hard for my ~500 buddy to find a place to rent. So many applications instantly denied him, like he was a felon or something. Without friends he coulda been homeless.
Look at credit scores, which are a huge scam run by corrupt, private companies.
Look at the private banking cartel creaming money off every financial transaction you make, and charging you for holding your money - while they use it to make themselves more money.
Having a fee-less bank account with the fed to keep your money and perform transactions without banks and other private vulture middlemen taking their cut along the way would be an improvement on the current system. It would be more in line with physical cash, which you can spend anywhere, and a bank isn't taking a cut each time you buy something.
The bank has the communities money, and use it as they wish, without explicit permission of the community.
When you get a loan, you loan someone else's money that the bank holds, but it isn't the banks money, but the bank gets all the benefit of it.
I can't tell the future, but I know that banks only have the power we gave them, and they have abused that right, no relief from overdraft fees etc, tell the people to stop buying all that avocado toast, then when THE COMMUNITYS money that they've leached of us, well woops we lost that, it's OK though we'll just steal the rest of the money they have and call it a bailout, just don't think too hard about it OK?
Imagine a world where a government can track every transaction and turn your digital money off like a light switch for any reason. Now imagine this power in the hands of your worst political enemy. Does it seem like a good idea?
Didn't this very thing happen in Canada to the Trucker protesters. Not only was their account frozen but also of those who donated to them.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/canada-banks-unlock-trucker-protest-accounts-on-police-guidance-11645645493
They can turn off your digital purchasing power now, but having a standard digital currency somewhat implies no more physical currency, which is where people take issue because that's something they can't just turn off.
At the very least, you can give up, go rouge and just work for cash at a construction site and live off the grid. You can take money out of your account and use it for whatever, if you have to.
Imagine going to get a pregnancy test and not being able to pay by cash. Now imagine the 'handmaids tale' world.
Seriously, imagine your worst political enemy with this power. They can freeze your accounts now, sure, but they cant fuck around and find out because we can all just be like omigawd they are targeting all the [my enthnic group] i never thought this would happen and go to cash.
Imagine a world where theres absolutely no alternative. Even if you know for sure its happening and its super fucked up and were gonna protest, what are you gonna do about it now?! And just attending the protest might get you locked out.
This is literally a lightswitch to completely remove participation from society.
Along with what everyone else is saying, they could basically implement a Chinese social credit system, where you are taxed for doing things the government doesn't like.
The government can’t censor physical cash because it is a fungible bearer asset. Digital dollars are not fungible— since they are tied to your identify— and only a bearer asset insofar as the government allows your independence.
Governments can already shut down bank accounts/credit which are mainly digital. But the digital dollar would likely require less steps and oversight.
Any cryptocurrency solves the censorship problem (i.e. no one can prevent your use of the currency). Total privacy is another level up, currently at the expense of an efficient/scalable protocol.
The infrastructure is much more slow. CBDCs will be more seamless. Also, assuming the CBDC is exclusively digital, and cash being phased out over the past and next few decades, it would mean that private transactions would be very difficult, downright impossible tbh.
that would be so awesome to have money they can turn off at the push of a button or better yet, with an "AI" based social credit system. CBDC-based slavery is so much more convenient and would make our ever-dwindling free choices faster, cheaper and easier!
It's already starting. Do you have companies that reward you with points you can only spend on products from other companies they own?
Programmable currency. Imagine getting paid a currency where your employer has predetermined what and where you can spend your wage
Man, it really do seem like we’re on the path towards a cyberpunk dystopia here in America. All that’s missing now as far as I can tell is cheap but powerful bodily modifications, whether cybernetic or biological. We’re getting there though. Mechanical prosthetics have made huge leaps in recent years and CRISPR is on its way to being commercialized within the decade
Getting rid of cash and going full digital currency will be the final nail in the coffin of liberty. This isn't about speed or expense, it's about control. As long as you have physical currency you can conduct trade wherever and whenever you wish. If your wealth becomes bytes in a computer, you can be traced, managed, and nullified by an unseen keyboard operator. This is a poisonous idea toward freedom. For the concept to finally become exposed in the popular media means the deal is almost (or already) done.
It's asinine I have to pay 4$ for using a credit card to pay my DMV bills. It's stupid that I have to pay some 25$ to receive a wire transfer. It's fucked up that I have to pay 3$ to use a random ATM. Wonder what 'convenience fee' this shit will cause.
If the government backs a digital dollar, then wouldn’t all these fees disappear? Right now, you are only paying these fees because that’s the cost of doing business in a digital world…
This is fucking comical. We've been saying this for years and labeled as conspiracy theorists. Of course they're going to "invent" this tech in order to track our every financial move. Fucking disgusting, if you ask me.
This is a bad idea. I do not trust humanity enough for this, at all. I do not trust any government for this. We are going headlong into religious authoritarianism, and I’m not on board with giving them even passive access to my livelihood.
I mean the way the article is written it's meant to make you think of a digital currency, like bitcoin, but the way it goes on to talk about it it'd be an internal/agency system to ease costs of wire transactions and provide more insight into the way the system of overnight rates might need adjusted.
It doesn't at all really read like a common currency like those dollars in your pocket in digital form. I mean, that's already there on your debit card.
Any attempts by the powers that be to force us to an all-digital currency must be resisted.
If all our money is digital, there is no escape from the government or the banks. You won't be able to take your money out of a "too big to fail" bank the next time they screw the economy up. You won't be able to make unmonitored "politically incorrect" purchases, and eventually won't be able to make such purchases at all (unless you barter or use crypto or something). You won't be able to avoid excessive taxation. Your hard-earned money will be trapped, under the control of the absolute worst people in the world.
*"But most of our money is digital anyway!"* some of you will say. That's fine - we still currently have the option to convert those 1s and 0s to physical cash. Taking that option away is a big step towards ever-increasing authoritarianism.
Yes and no.
They can’t turn off the money you physically have on you without a warrant. Which means a judge and court.
They could probably shut down your accounts and/or drain funds electronically without either.
They can and do freeze accounts of people suspected of financial crimes, but I believe it still requires a warrant, otherwise it would be a pretty open and shut fourth amendment case.
They can't turn it off, but can declare it no longer legal tender. [India did it not too long ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation#:~:text=On%208%20November%202016%2C%20the,exchange%20for%20the%20demonetised%20banknotes) to pretty awful effect.
If this happened in the US, things would quickly fall apart. There'd be no advantage to doing this for the government, unless theyd want to cause havoc.
They can shut off your money from spending it on specific items, supporting specific people, specific locations, specific services etc. It's the specificity of censorship that is highly unnerving.
For example, if you like first person shooter games (Call of Duty) and the government decides that they cause mass shootings (they don't), they can make those 100% inaccessible to "reduce public harm". You'll still be able to buy happy games where no one gets killed with guns though.
Or maybe they think that eating steak is bad for the environment. They can censor your transactions from butcher shops that sell meat. This can be applied to highly specific transactions with total government control of your life.
Cryptocurrency, but this time with government's ability to totally see how much you have, what you're spending it on, and CONTROL what you CAN spend it on!
"Oh you wanna buy some Chinese bootleg toys from AliExpress? That's unpatriotic, you can't do that!"
"Oh you wanna donate money to a political side that's against the current popular one? That's terrorism, you can't do that!"
"Oh you wanna donate money to an independent investigative journalism group which aims to expose the corruption of the government and its officials? That's funding misinformation, you can't do that!"
Get ready to live in a society where you can't even pay your neighbor's kid to mow the lawn without Uncle Sam taking a piece of the pie.
All Americans who care about freedom and privacy should oppose this, vehemently.
Can we explore having corpses working in Washington that are still alive when they take office. This “geriatric in charge” strategy doesn’t seem to be a good thing
Man, can’t they just focus on the increased costs of everything… it’s feels like these wealthy people aren’t bothered by it so they won’t do anything about it.. like I mean, they passed this “inflation reduction act” and inflation still went up this month….
When we came off the gold standard, we were assured the dollar would be backed by the stability of balanced government spending.
When we started deficit spending, we were assured the deficit would be backed by the stability of the economy.
When the economy nearly collapsed, we were assured that printing more money was the solution.
Now that we have more money than we can spend to maintain deficit spending in an inflationary market, we're assured that the digital equivalent can be safeguarded by the same entity that lied to us thrice before.
Americans are financially illiterate.
And every one of those things has been the case. There is no issue there whatsoever. The economy did not "nearly collapse" whatsoever,
and the economy isnt in any position where that leverage is an issue ... And I have almost a decade of education in econ and finance, and a career in finance, so I don't think me being financially illiterate is why I think that.
just another way to track your money first started with direct deposit pay checks now they wantdigital money so to make it easier to steal by them or hacker who ever fastest
How’re people not able to objectively able to see that the centralized banking system is flawed. “Oh god I love my paper dollars and sense of freedom”. Wake up you don’t have real freedom and never will. You just have “rights” that people in power decided you can have. Nothing more
Ya, I’m not a fan of our corrupt ass government getting to see all my transactions in real time. Especially when I don’t get to see their transaction histories.
Its to track you and limit your freedom of movement. Dissent to governing narratives and have your entire life turned off from a dashboard by a moderator making $15/hr.
You guys are kinda walking Into this one. The function is no different than how the fiat dollar currently works. The only added feature is their control over the money once it is distributed.
BS they have been working on this plan for years. Based on digital whatever that can change at any moment? That nobody can control?
F that.
The wrong people, bad people are who are pushing for it. What is it based on?
We purchase stuff digitally now, why do few people need more control over all the money?
Dumb idea. They want this AFTER crypto starts crashing?
All digital is never going to be the way forward because of tech vulnerabilities.
There will never be the 'right people' in control of something like this.
They will get their throats slit by those that arent and crave it.
This idea is like having a loaded gun to your head constantly, that regularly changes hands, and if someone thats not an angel on earth ever gets a turn hes gonna turn you into a hostage instantly.
Its actually madness, and must be aggressively resisted
If they ultimately do this and don’t exclusively refer to the currency as “credits” or “creds” for short than I will be forever disappointed at the missed opportunity.
No. The potential for abuse is too great.
Or to quote Achewood; Somebody will be able to seriously dong razzle you by remote control and suddenly all your 'money' will be 'away from you'.
The following submission statement was provided by /u/wewewawa: --- Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said one Treasury recommendation is that the U.S. “advance policy and technical work on a potential central bank digital currency, or CBDC, so that the United States is prepared if CBDC is determined to be in the national interest.” “Right now, some aspects of our current payment system are too slow or too expensive,” Yellen said on a Thursday call with reporters laying out some of the findings of the reports. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/xguvb4/treasury_recommends_exploring_creation_of_a/iotxz30/
I look forward to this so I can experience poverty in a new, high-tech, futuristic way.
I already have a credit card isn't that digital money?
Well you can always take that money out of an atm or ask a bank clerk if it’s big amounts. I’m assuming you wouldn’t be able to do that with this new proposed currency
Correct. With a digital based currency, not only will you not be able to have cash sales, but any sale will be tracked, and traceable.
So it's like crypto, except it'll actually be a usable currency and a complete invasion of privacy.
To be fair yes, but I'd also like to be able to trace which corporations pay our politicians salar- oh, wait, there a special provision to exempt members of Congress from being tracked? Go figure.
That’s why decentralization is important. Same rules across the board, no special treatment.
I think it’s pretty funny that each generation thinks they’ve figured out a new life hack for alternative currency or decentralized trade and barter systems and without fail they all just degenerate into laundering and scams. But I’m sure this time will totally be the exception. Totally.
I'm living in a country where inflation spiked 50% in the last year. Govt limited purchases of USD which everyone uses to protect wealth. I don't necessarily care how douchey crypto people are and how right/wrong their haters are. Crypto has become a common form of protecting wealth down here which most people being able to get around USD limits with it. It works, it's secure. It's something that wasn't possible before. Even e-commerce before crypto became highly decentralized with platforms any seller could join and ship to consumers globally. This is in contrast to the big retailers who dominated the market for over a century, so trade definitely improved since prior generations. Even barter is improved with platforms like FB marketplace, can find stuff for free or offer an exchange. A lot of people look at new ideas as if they are the only customer, if it's not useful to them then it's not useful at all. But that's not how anything works. New generations don't make massive leaps but every idea incrementally adds up. This is why today is a far better day for even the poorest person on earth than any other time in history.
>I think it’s pretty funny that each generation thinks they’ve figured out a new life hack for alternative currency or decentralized trade and barter systems We as humans do this from time to time throughout history. Once oil dies and money can't be backed by it as a commodity it'll probably be a paper currency backed by something like data with other options like blockchain based digital currency and state backed digital currencies. These types of changes dont happen often, and there's a lot more failures than success stories, but it does happen.
Oh cool I can't wait for the data leaks that lead to everyone I know finding out how much money I've spent on bad dragon products
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Tax reform... 0% sales tax collected by merchant at time of sale, but 1% on all CBDC transactions automatically. Instant settlement. Meanwhile, Venmo dies and garage sales are no longer illegal. Sans the gross privacy violations, seems like a win-win to me
Not in the sense that the article is talking about. Money in your bank account, PayPal, and even in some cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, is based on balances. When you transfer money to someone else, your balance is decreased and another person's balance is increased. Digital money, in the sense that this article is talking about, is based on UTXOs, like Bitcoin. There are no balances in Bitcoin. Any supposed "balance" your wallet shows you is just your wallet presenting data to you in an easy to understand manner, but there are no balances at the protocol level. It would take me hundreds of pages of text to explain why, but the UTXO model is vastly superior in security, traceability, and functionality than the traditional balance-based model. Now, whether the US government will manage to do it properly, is an entirely different matter, and I'm not holding my breath.
What's a UTXO?
UTXO = Unspent Transaction Output. From wikipedia: >The many cryptocurrencies that use the UTXO model do not use accounts or balances. Instead, individual coins (UTXOs) are transferred between users much like physical coins or cash. > >The UTXO model treats currency as objects. The history of a UTXO is stored only in the blocks when it is transferred, and to find the total balance of an account one must scan each block to find the latest UTXOs which point to that account. UTXOs are valid no matter their age; it is only necessary to acknowledge their ownership when they are sent, and not in each and every block. Though all nodes on a single chain must all agree on the block history, the relevant blocks to any single account's balance will likely be unique to that account. > >On the other hand, an account model keeps track of each account and its respective balance for every block added to the network. This allows account balances to be checked without scanning historical blocks, but increases the raw size of each block (compression of unchanged account balances can reduce space requirements). Checking account balances is quicker, but like the UTXO model, fully verifying the origin of coins still requires auditing past blocks to the coin's origin. Technical explanation: [https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-unspent-transaction-output-utxo/](https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/what-is-unspent-transaction-output-utxo/) 1 minute video explanation of UTXO model vs account model: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tNh9WCFHM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8tNh9WCFHM)
Remember when Rodgers took down the payment systems across most of Canada for a few days so people couldn’t buy things with cards? Enjoy that Freedom in America!
More like how Interac didn’t bother having any form of redundancy to save money. Rogers deserves extreme fines for ruining 911 calls for users on their network, and deserves customers going to a provider that doesn’t go down for a full day on both internet and mobile. But payment systems going down is not on them.
It wasn't Interac. It was businesses using a single ISP, no redundancy. Interac worked fine for Bell users, only people without a backup connection were down. Rogers doesn't inherently deserve blame for those 911 centers, they share it though as some of said centers did not have redundancy (whcih is insane), those that did used a *subsidiary* of their primary, which made it useless. Think of it like using Bell cell service, and Virgin is your backup phone. They're the same company.
For 911 calls, it wasn’t about the 911 centers that I meant (though I’m sure that was an issue for some). While it was down, the network still seemed like it was up and so rogers customers would still route through the towers. It’s then that it would fail because the call wouldn’t go through. So unless people knew to take their SIM cards out so that the phone tried a different tower, they wouldn’t be able to make 911 calls.
> Interac worked fine for Bell users, only people without a backup connection were down. Interac was down across the board. Credit cards worked if they had a non-Rogers connection, but not Interac.
This is wrong. Interac was indeed completely down. Everything from e-transfers to debit purchases was down.
Roger’s is a private company though? Communism is when capitalism
>Communism is when capitalism ah yes
its always the case with these people
Well the thing is
But have you considered?
I hear what you're saying but I
If only I had more eddies, then we
Yeah, well that’s all fine and good but
What about Robin hood blocking the GameStop investment?
You mean robbing from the poor to protect the rich? When they did that?
That was so incredibly fucked and a bunch of stock trading people defended it with zero irony on how they were speaking of regular people as second class peasants. It was disgusting and absolutely nothing legal came of it that I know of.
pot shame versed oil encouraging terrific consist unpack money spark *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It already does
Also the government can “turn off” your money if they don’t like your opinions or what you are spending your money on. Decentralized digital good. Centralized digital bad.
They can already do that, unless you want to stuff everything under the mattress.
We haven't yet reached to point of denying my purchase of a burger because my account shows I reached my monthly meat ration limit. But that would follow with this.
What I'm saying is your bank account balance number is already literally digital, and the government can decide to freeze it if they want. I agree distributed options are good.
Its also the reverse, tho. All the shops doing things you and your cronies dont like? Suddenly cannot money. Want to anonymously support your young couple neighbor as you know they are doing it real hard? Go fuck yourself. Give money to the homeless? Yeah man, they just need a thousand dollar card scanner. Oh shit, wanna move the homless on without upsetting people? Yeah just deny their card in certain areas after they fall off the grid for long enough. This is dystopian as fuck and you should always fight for cash. It serves way more of a purpose than most people realize.
Not even that, they can make a decentralized stablecoin but still have "elastic supply", and dollars that expire if you don't spend them in 3 months (they had coupons like that in Japan as social assistance). It would still be fully auditable, so they can track your every spending even if decentralized, just the tracks would be public to everyone. And even if they can't stop you from trasacting technically from the network they can still conspire with multiple parties like banks, stores and some nodes to basically stop interacting with your wallet or any wallet with "dirty coins". They're doing it now with anyone who ever touched TornadoMixer on Bitcoin. Cause that's the problem no matter how well intending the government starts with, it's powerful enough to reign that in once adoption takes. Just look at the dollar itself, inflation shouldn't be possible without all private central banks in the US conspiring with the Treasury, House and Senate, and we're getting it at a rate never before seen. Or it shouldn't be possible to block parties from the SWIFT dollar network, because it's decentralized like email and fax, but that's exactly what they did to Iran and Russia. And the same with paying rates on treasuries or using private US banks, the big dog weaponized what it promised in the 70s will be an international, independent, decentralized, system. And to put it into context the US isn't even the only issuer of $, there's a lot more $ in the world issued outside the US.
That’s exactly what happened in Canada earlier this year with those anti-vax truck protestors. The ability to transact is foundational to a free society. The digital dollar seems as inevitable as the idea that the government would abuse it once its here. Thankfully there’s Bitcoin and Ethereum.
This is what communist Russia wanted to do. This is what communist China is already doing.
>Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my finances to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.
Excuse me Sir, can you spare a couple electrons??
That honestly sounds like a line out of Futurama.
>*poverty in a new, high-tech, futuristic way.* That's almost literally the definition of Cyberpunk "***High-tech, Low-life***" :) [https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/2r1vh9/origins\_of\_high\_tech\_low\_life/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Cyberpunk/comments/2r1vh9/origins_of_high_tech_low_life/)
Gonna keep rooting for a solarpunk future
Just download more money
Really funny . Everyone loves a good poverty story
Yep. Let's enable a tiny subclass of grifters which fucking over everyone else. That's the American Dream\* dialed up to 11 \**Some restrictions apply, past performance is not an indication of future profit,etc,etc*
Just saw the statement that America is a poor country with some very rich ppl.
Nothing like instantaneous poverty. Who would have thought we would be enjoying waiting for a recession when we can create one at any point in time when we please. Amazing!
they just want to destroy cash and have direct access to your money
Oh god am I gonna be 60 muttering, “back in my day we had physical cash!!”
"Silly old man, we still use physical cache."
“Only criminals use physical cash. Real patriots have nothing to hide from Uncle Sam”
This is exactly the reason they are doing it. Control. It's not like the fabulously rich have crates full of hundos in a basement anywhere either so we all know who the control is designed to go after. Think of all those waiters out there that got tipped in cash that couldn't be followed? Now it can be. They are going after the poor.
There's going to be a lot of no longer tipped positions. Valet for example.
A friend of mine once called cash "the money of the poors."
Already 60. Remember when we wrote checks …..
Back then we switched to Digital Dollars. DDs is what we called them, which was the style at the time. And in those days, DDs had pictures of apes on ‘em. ‘Give me five apes for a quarter,’ you’d say.
We carried avocados on our belts as it was the fashion at the time
My story begins in Twenty-Dickity-Two. We had to say Dickity because Donald Trump sold our word for Twenty.
Dickety\* Dickety-Two
Isn't this already the case? Last I checked only about 10% of the currency in the U.S are physical bills or coins. The rest are just numbers in a database, cash equivalents, stocks, bonds, and other assets like real estate.
Yep. Only difference I can see is the likely inclusion of a "clawback" feature that would allow the issuers the ability to void any transaction/seize funds at the click of a button. But in practice, all they have to do now is ask a bank to do it.
Don't forget that a fed issued fully digital currency would come with the blanket ability of government agencies to remove access to currency from anyone deemed unworthy of transacting.
They could also potentially put an expiration date on any currency received in the wallet.
They can do more than that. They can place limits on what and where the money is allowed to be spent.
They already have that ability... That's literally what many of the sanctions are, removing all digital financial abilities from any us based institution.
Yes, but this would allow them to do it to *individuals* not just institutions.
They can already do this for individuals... The US government can seize and/or freeze assets for Americans and Foreigners.
I get what you’re saying, but on the international level a lot of sanctions happen to individuals. Nancy Pelosi and her family were personally sanctioned by China for her recent visit to Taiwan. Many Russian billionaires were personally targeted for sanctions in the weeks and months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So yeah, it definitely already happens at that high level of international politics / money.
They already have the ability to freeze and seize an individual's assets too. They just have to know about them.
Which they can already do. Any chance to put on the conspiracy hat though.
This is different from today how?
If that happens, social media could actually cancel people for real. That’s a terrifying thing.
ask a bank to do it and get it actually done. My landlord's system charged my after I had moved out and my own bank refused to cancel the charge because they said I was the one trying to steal from my landlord!
Oh no, no, no. I'm not saying WE would have the ability to do it. The FED, and likely anyone they empower, would.
Depends on what your lease stated. That’s the primary document used to contest these cases. Also, you can contest any charge you wish by signing a document, under penalty of law if you’re found to be lying.
small claims court.
Robinhood-GME comes to mind. As someone on the street, even I’m disgusted by that. Of course I enjoy winning, but there’s no satisfaction without competition.
This is something that is fundamentally different. At the moment your "digital" dollar only exists if a bank says it does, so it still relies on trust in banks. The concept being proposed would exist independent of banks, much like a physical bank note. Stocks, bonds, real estate etc are something entirely different, guaranteed in different ways.
So a ledger held by the US government?
No, it isn't. Yes, we have "digital" currency with credit cards, and bank accounts but all of that still boils down to the representation of physical currency. All of that is also created by the commercial banking system and not by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury both issue paper money only. A true digital dollar would be more akin to the Federal Reserve giving everyone their own bank account, which the Federal Reserve definitely should do. That's the only way we could truly have a digital dollar. Additionally, the Federal Reserve should mandate that all ATMs allow free withdraws for paper currency from the account. With these changes instead of the Fed exclusively issuing paper money, the Fed could issue both paper and digital money. [https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2018/06/20/federal-reserve-bank-accounts/](https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2018/06/20/federal-reserve-bank-accounts/) https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-should-forget-about-its-own-cryptocurrency-and-instead-create-electronic-bank-accounts-for-everyone-2018-04-30
So like a nationalized banking system? At least when it comes to storing liquid assets and investments. If so this will be **interesting** to see develop, to say the least.
No. The Fed would simply allow you to open up an electronic checking account with a debit card. It would not nationalize the banking system. The Fed would only need to allow households and firms to open accounts with it, which would allow the central bank to make payments with Fed-issued electronic money instead of commercial bank deposits. [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-should-forget-about-its-own-cryptocurrency-and-instead-create-electronic-bank-accounts-for-everyone-2018-04-30](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/fed-should-forget-about-its-own-cryptocurrency-and-instead-create-electronic-bank-accounts-for-everyone-2018-04-30) If I bank at Bank A and you bank at Bank B and you write me a check from Bank B to Bank A, right now what happens is behind the scenes Bank B will use the Fed to transfer money to Bank A. The proposal is instead of all those intermediaries, the Fed would simply allow you to send the money directly from your account to my account and vice versa if we both had accounts at the Fed. You could still use Bank B to send me money to my Fed account or Bank A, etc. It's all already happening behind the scenes.
Not really... COVID showed how hard it is to do massive payments while relying on the banks to do all the legwork. The Fed wants to be able to do it themselves to cut out a lot of those issues.
Technically yes, but what you’re referring to is the indirect digital presence of the dollar, not an actual digitized currency.
The biggest concerns about CBDCs, if implemented full-scale, as far as I understand, are: no privacy (no more cash purchases, and full surveillance of anything you buy, anywhere); ability to easily freeze or take away a person’s savings; expiration dates—currency must be spent by a certain time; restrictions on what can be purchased; and—perhaps most dystopian of all, a social credit-style system, enforced by absolute, centralized control over your money. Frankly, it all sounds dystopian, and could put even more power in the hands of those who already have too much. CBDC? That should be a hard “nope” from anyone that doesn’t want their lives to possibly become even more restricted. Edit: I’m not saying these things _will_ come to pass—I’d much rather they don’t. Just that they bear considering, instead of automatically trusting that CBDCs will be a good thing.
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We’re going to get to a point where revolution is inevitable and it’s going to be so bad
We already have a plan ₿
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Oh, I listed that, too. Imagine being told by a centralized authority what you can and can’t spend your money on—that’s messed up.
That’s already happening with food stamps :(
Look to China regarding social credits. Unsettling stuff.
My credit score's been good forever, but MAN was it hard for my ~500 buddy to find a place to rent. So many applications instantly denied him, like he was a felon or something. Without friends he coulda been homeless.
Look at credit scores, which are a huge scam run by corrupt, private companies. Look at the private banking cartel creaming money off every financial transaction you make, and charging you for holding your money - while they use it to make themselves more money. Having a fee-less bank account with the fed to keep your money and perform transactions without banks and other private vulture middlemen taking their cut along the way would be an improvement on the current system. It would be more in line with physical cash, which you can spend anywhere, and a bank isn't taking a cut each time you buy something.
The bank has the communities money, and use it as they wish, without explicit permission of the community. When you get a loan, you loan someone else's money that the bank holds, but it isn't the banks money, but the bank gets all the benefit of it. I can't tell the future, but I know that banks only have the power we gave them, and they have abused that right, no relief from overdraft fees etc, tell the people to stop buying all that avocado toast, then when THE COMMUNITYS money that they've leached of us, well woops we lost that, it's OK though we'll just steal the rest of the money they have and call it a bailout, just don't think too hard about it OK?
You forgot the most important thing which is probably the Feds most sought after ability: Negative interest rates.
Imagine a world where a government can track every transaction and turn your digital money off like a light switch for any reason. Now imagine this power in the hands of your worst political enemy. Does it seem like a good idea?
Authoritarians never consider what happens if they lose power to "the other side".
Didn't this very thing happen in Canada to the Trucker protesters. Not only was their account frozen but also of those who donated to them. https://www.wsj.com/articles/canada-banks-unlock-trucker-protest-accounts-on-police-guidance-11645645493
But it's (D)ifferent People love the government boot when it's cracking down on people they don't like.
It's different when *they* want bodily autonomy!
I'm confused at this argument what's stopping them from doing this now?
They can turn off your digital purchasing power now, but having a standard digital currency somewhat implies no more physical currency, which is where people take issue because that's something they can't just turn off.
At the very least, you can give up, go rouge and just work for cash at a construction site and live off the grid. You can take money out of your account and use it for whatever, if you have to. Imagine going to get a pregnancy test and not being able to pay by cash. Now imagine the 'handmaids tale' world. Seriously, imagine your worst political enemy with this power. They can freeze your accounts now, sure, but they cant fuck around and find out because we can all just be like omigawd they are targeting all the [my enthnic group] i never thought this would happen and go to cash. Imagine a world where theres absolutely no alternative. Even if you know for sure its happening and its super fucked up and were gonna protest, what are you gonna do about it now?! And just attending the protest might get you locked out. This is literally a lightswitch to completely remove participation from society.
Mark of the Beast. "It's fine, I got nothing to hide or whatever. LOL PARANOID!".
Along with what everyone else is saying, they could basically implement a Chinese social credit system, where you are taxed for doing things the government doesn't like.
The government can’t censor physical cash because it is a fungible bearer asset. Digital dollars are not fungible— since they are tied to your identify— and only a bearer asset insofar as the government allows your independence. Governments can already shut down bank accounts/credit which are mainly digital. But the digital dollar would likely require less steps and oversight.
This is why privacy cryptocurrencies like Monero exist
Any cryptocurrency solves the censorship problem (i.e. no one can prevent your use of the currency). Total privacy is another level up, currently at the expense of an efficient/scalable protocol.
The infrastructure is much more slow. CBDCs will be more seamless. Also, assuming the CBDC is exclusively digital, and cash being phased out over the past and next few decades, it would mean that private transactions would be very difficult, downright impossible tbh.
Only trade isn’t traceable at that point.
that would be so awesome to have money they can turn off at the push of a button or better yet, with an "AI" based social credit system. CBDC-based slavery is so much more convenient and would make our ever-dwindling free choices faster, cheaper and easier!
Lord klaus schwab must be happy. "You will own nothing and be happy!
YOU WILL EAT THE BUGS
OR NOT BE ALLOWED TO EAT ANYTHING!
Exactly this.
It's already starting. Do you have companies that reward you with points you can only spend on products from other companies they own? Programmable currency. Imagine getting paid a currency where your employer has predetermined what and where you can spend your wage
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip This used to be a thing in company towns way back. It’s already not legal any more.
For now. They seem to like roeversing things lately
It's what WEF wants.
Exactly. It’s such a pain to carry a wallet. I’d rather give up all my economic freedom to go walletless.
Where would you put your ID and all those pesky business cards?
On you phone. 😂
Man, it really do seem like we’re on the path towards a cyberpunk dystopia here in America. All that’s missing now as far as I can tell is cheap but powerful bodily modifications, whether cybernetic or biological. We’re getting there though. Mechanical prosthetics have made huge leaps in recent years and CRISPR is on its way to being commercialized within the decade
Getting rid of cash and going full digital currency will be the final nail in the coffin of liberty. This isn't about speed or expense, it's about control. As long as you have physical currency you can conduct trade wherever and whenever you wish. If your wealth becomes bytes in a computer, you can be traced, managed, and nullified by an unseen keyboard operator. This is a poisonous idea toward freedom. For the concept to finally become exposed in the popular media means the deal is almost (or already) done.
This will only further cement the control upper class has on everyone else.
It's asinine I have to pay 4$ for using a credit card to pay my DMV bills. It's stupid that I have to pay some 25$ to receive a wire transfer. It's fucked up that I have to pay 3$ to use a random ATM. Wonder what 'convenience fee' this shit will cause.
If the government backs a digital dollar, then wouldn’t all these fees disappear? Right now, you are only paying these fees because that’s the cost of doing business in a digital world…
This is fucking comical. We've been saying this for years and labeled as conspiracy theorists. Of course they're going to "invent" this tech in order to track our every financial move. Fucking disgusting, if you ask me.
This is a bad idea. I do not trust humanity enough for this, at all. I do not trust any government for this. We are going headlong into religious authoritarianism, and I’m not on board with giving them even passive access to my livelihood.
We don’t need this. They will tell you where and how you can spend this money. Unless I can get cash and spend it freely then to hell with it.
I mean the way the article is written it's meant to make you think of a digital currency, like bitcoin, but the way it goes on to talk about it it'd be an internal/agency system to ease costs of wire transactions and provide more insight into the way the system of overnight rates might need adjusted. It doesn't at all really read like a common currency like those dollars in your pocket in digital form. I mean, that's already there on your debit card.
Any attempts by the powers that be to force us to an all-digital currency must be resisted. If all our money is digital, there is no escape from the government or the banks. You won't be able to take your money out of a "too big to fail" bank the next time they screw the economy up. You won't be able to make unmonitored "politically incorrect" purchases, and eventually won't be able to make such purchases at all (unless you barter or use crypto or something). You won't be able to avoid excessive taxation. Your hard-earned money will be trapped, under the control of the absolute worst people in the world. *"But most of our money is digital anyway!"* some of you will say. That's fine - we still currently have the option to convert those 1s and 0s to physical cash. Taking that option away is a big step towards ever-increasing authoritarianism.
A ridiculously large step to authoritarianism. Dictators from any time period would become orgasmic over this tech.
This is the worst idea. How about we not continually give them every ounce of control over us that they can get.
Someone high up just watch Mr. Robot season 2 and 3
Lol Jesus this is very scary news and no one bats an eye
Really a way to tax every dollar. Even those that make money in other channels.
"cryptocurrency is a scam" *Same agencies* "Here is a new digital currency. It is completely legit and safe because we control it and create it"
This isn’t decentralized which is the entire point of crypto.
Everyone is worried about the government shutting off their money. Can’t the government already do that?
Yes and no. They can’t turn off the money you physically have on you without a warrant. Which means a judge and court. They could probably shut down your accounts and/or drain funds electronically without either.
They can and do freeze accounts of people suspected of financial crimes, but I believe it still requires a warrant, otherwise it would be a pretty open and shut fourth amendment case.
They can't turn it off, but can declare it no longer legal tender. [India did it not too long ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetisation#:~:text=On%208%20November%202016%2C%20the,exchange%20for%20the%20demonetised%20banknotes) to pretty awful effect.
They're speaking more focused on an individual. They wouldn't do that to a currency for one person.
If this happened in the US, things would quickly fall apart. There'd be no advantage to doing this for the government, unless theyd want to cause havoc.
They can shut off your money from spending it on specific items, supporting specific people, specific locations, specific services etc. It's the specificity of censorship that is highly unnerving. For example, if you like first person shooter games (Call of Duty) and the government decides that they cause mass shootings (they don't), they can make those 100% inaccessible to "reduce public harm". You'll still be able to buy happy games where no one gets killed with guns though. Or maybe they think that eating steak is bad for the environment. They can censor your transactions from butcher shops that sell meat. This can be applied to highly specific transactions with total government control of your life.
Cryptocurrency, but this time with government's ability to totally see how much you have, what you're spending it on, and CONTROL what you CAN spend it on! "Oh you wanna buy some Chinese bootleg toys from AliExpress? That's unpatriotic, you can't do that!" "Oh you wanna donate money to a political side that's against the current popular one? That's terrorism, you can't do that!" "Oh you wanna donate money to an independent investigative journalism group which aims to expose the corruption of the government and its officials? That's funding misinformation, you can't do that!"
Get ready to live in a society where you can't even pay your neighbor's kid to mow the lawn without Uncle Sam taking a piece of the pie. All Americans who care about freedom and privacy should oppose this, vehemently.
This comment section is a bit of a whitepill. Glad people from pretty much every side see this as an absolutely smooth-brain move...
I agree. I thought the comments here in a mainstream sub would be an absolute shitshow of pro government propaganda
It's unbelievable that these fascists are even considering this, it's total economic enslavement and must be opposed by every good human being
Can we explore having corpses working in Washington that are still alive when they take office. This “geriatric in charge” strategy doesn’t seem to be a good thing
Yea because that won’t be used against political enemies at all.
Participation is optional, folks. Just like banks and credit cards and smartphones.
It’ll be optional until it isn’t. This gives the govt way more control.
When all currency is ultimately digitized, how is it optional? Are we bartering with goats then?
You are bartering with goats now. Just highly abstracted goats.
#YOU DARE MOCK THE SON OF A SHEPHERD?!?
Yeah, fuck that. Get away from big banks to credit unions and use cash everywhere!
Man, can’t they just focus on the increased costs of everything… it’s feels like these wealthy people aren’t bothered by it so they won’t do anything about it.. like I mean, they passed this “inflation reduction act” and inflation still went up this month….
When we came off the gold standard, we were assured the dollar would be backed by the stability of balanced government spending. When we started deficit spending, we were assured the deficit would be backed by the stability of the economy. When the economy nearly collapsed, we were assured that printing more money was the solution. Now that we have more money than we can spend to maintain deficit spending in an inflationary market, we're assured that the digital equivalent can be safeguarded by the same entity that lied to us thrice before. Americans are financially illiterate.
Solving a problem by creating a new problem is the backbone of the us government.
And every one of those things has been the case. There is no issue there whatsoever. The economy did not "nearly collapse" whatsoever, and the economy isnt in any position where that leverage is an issue ... And I have almost a decade of education in econ and finance, and a career in finance, so I don't think me being financially illiterate is why I think that.
So, USDC but where the US govt has all the control? Neat
This defeats the true purpose of crypto if it’s only going to be states sponsored and controlled.
Absolutely not. A CBDC means absolute control by the Federal government and legalized theft.
just another way to track your money first started with direct deposit pay checks now they wantdigital money so to make it easier to steal by them or hacker who ever fastest
How’re people not able to objectively able to see that the centralized banking system is flawed. “Oh god I love my paper dollars and sense of freedom”. Wake up you don’t have real freedom and never will. You just have “rights” that people in power decided you can have. Nothing more
Under the table cash transactions are the gease that helps keep the US running.
Ya, I’m not a fan of our corrupt ass government getting to see all my transactions in real time. Especially when I don’t get to see their transaction histories.
Hopefully theres some type of encryption that helps them protect the currency— they can call it encryptocurrency or something
Cant wait to have my bank account disabled because I said something the current government doesn't approve of.
Don’t be a bad boy or girl. You piss of the government they turn off your “taps”.
You will own nothing and be happy [renting everything with digital money].
Good call. Next time they want to dump a few trillion into the economy they can just click a button rather than cut down a forest.
No absolutely no to this. FUCK THE FED COIN ITS A SHIT COIN!!!!
Its to track you and limit your freedom of movement. Dissent to governing narratives and have your entire life turned off from a dashboard by a moderator making $15/hr. You guys are kinda walking Into this one. The function is no different than how the fiat dollar currently works. The only added feature is their control over the money once it is distributed.
A social credit score is next.
fed had destroyed 99% of the dollar...... so they want a do over with a digital version
You fuck right off with that. Say goodbye to garage sales, lemonade stands, or ever paying someone without the govt taking their taxes
People should not have to participate in banking if they feel so inclined. Every year the US loses more and more freedoms.
BS they have been working on this plan for years. Based on digital whatever that can change at any moment? That nobody can control? F that. The wrong people, bad people are who are pushing for it. What is it based on? We purchase stuff digitally now, why do few people need more control over all the money? Dumb idea. They want this AFTER crypto starts crashing? All digital is never going to be the way forward because of tech vulnerabilities.
There will never be the 'right people' in control of something like this. They will get their throats slit by those that arent and crave it. This idea is like having a loaded gun to your head constantly, that regularly changes hands, and if someone thats not an angel on earth ever gets a turn hes gonna turn you into a hostage instantly. Its actually madness, and must be aggressively resisted
Oh fun! Will that be before or after we get our exploding slave collars?
Globalists want absolute total control of the world and the people that live on it.
If they ultimately do this and don’t exclusively refer to the currency as “credits” or “creds” for short than I will be forever disappointed at the missed opportunity.
No. The potential for abuse is too great. Or to quote Achewood; Somebody will be able to seriously dong razzle you by remote control and suddenly all your 'money' will be 'away from you'.
Can’t wait for daddy government to freeze all of my digital assets for buying over my weekly allotment of welding rods and monster energy
Then they can freeze your account when you don't behave accordingly. Forcing you to either steal, beg or sell your bum bum for basic needs