10 ms·

Digital Money Across Borders: Macro-Financial Implications

97 points by aero88883 6y ago

mathiasrw 6y ago
It is going to be interesting in a few years to see how mush they will push the digital wallet for every person.
janandonly 6y ago
We already have a digital Euro/Dollar/Yen, just look at the banking app on your phone or the transactions you do with a bank or credit card. But I'm very scared to see what those digital wallets for CBDC will turn into. If central banks get control over money flows they can do horrible stuff: * set a maximum limit on the amount of money you are allowed to have/save in your CBDC wallet. * give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it (by taking the excess away at the end of the month or topping it up to a limit). This will erode all incentive to save. If forces consumption instead of preservation. * work with a whitelist of acceptable ways to spent the money. You want to sent some money to someone who is not a legal resident/lives abroad/is on a black list for xyz reason? Though luck... * set a "transaction" price / hidden tax on less trustworthy or less "wanted" persons or company's. Like when you want to buy liquor/a gun/give to a church you pay 5% transaction costs, but when you pay your rent the transaction costs are 0%. * in a very real sense untraceable money is privacy and making money traceable is taking privacy away. We may not have something to hide but there is nothing I want them to see either... Revelation 13:16,17 says "It puts under compulsion all people—the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free and the slaves—that these should be marked, and that nobody can buy or sell except a person having the mark"
- therein 6y ago
  Attach those digital wallets to biometrics and just like that, we have the nightmare to which you are alluding. Going against the zeigeist again but if something gets pushed onto us for something silly like "pandemic preparedness" or "contact & trace" like 9/11 has brought onto us...that offers identity management that can be expanded into a system like this... If that happens, can we please stop pretending like something about biology and infectious diseases has fundamentally changed because of COVID for a second and get back to our senses... We as a global society are clearly prone to collective hysteria whether we have been brought here by a series of unfortunate events and coincidences or by malice pushing their agenda. Science loves being proven wrong, science loves getting to the bottom of things. There is nothing wrong with worshiping science but scientist worship is a part of it. We are all humans with our egos, trouble admitting being wrong, or simply personal gain from acting a certain way. Many of us just go with things to fit in, or have a career or just to make ends meet. Numbers can be fudged. Everyone should have the stance of "show me" before believing. And you can't just take what media shows you at the face value. Reenactments, B-roll footage, the whole thing is a lot less "real" than we are lead to believe. It is not a pandemic if you need to be told it is a pandemic. You are losing your rights and freedoms because people are scared. If you were alive during 9/11, doesn't this feel eerily familiar? Doesn't it feel exactly like it feels when the second plane hit on 9/11? Scare me and take my rights and freedom. Can't you see people have the same emotional reaction when you try to get people to question the official COVID narrative that you see when you try to get them to think outside the official 9/11 narrative? We are a lot less free now than we were before 9/11. And we are not any safer. The same is about to happen if not happening right now. We are all being played. Open your eyes and question even the sources you trusted for years. Just because your views aligned with a source for years doesn't mean they are on your side. They can be fooled too. This isn't about intention. We are all human. We are all fallible and this is about to get worse unless we all open our eyes and stop repeating the narrative the media is feeding everyone.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pcdoodle 6y ago
    "It is not a pandemic if you need to be told it is a pandemic." I'm using that, thanks.
  - dannyw 6y ago
    Thank you. Check out this recent AMA from a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University: https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/jcxsb1/ask_me_anything_dr_jay_bhattacharya/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/jcxsb1/...
- mschuster91 6y ago
  > set a "transaction" price / hidden tax on less trustworthy or less "wanted" persons or company's. Like when you want to buy liquor/a gun/give to a church you pay 5% transaction costs, but when you pay your rent the transaction costs are 0%. That is what happens already today, you just don't notice it as a consumer as the vendor pays the CC bill.
- tsjq 6y ago
  >give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it (by taking the excess away at the end of the month or topping it up to a limit). that could be an interesting one for Universal Basic Income .
  - SailingSperm 6y ago
    It's not, and doesn't work. Firstly, it'll just get turned into something else (by spending/buying with it) that holds value and is sought after/tradable/fungible - Eg. Alcohol, gold, drugs, x_equiptment. Plus, if the money deletes after say 30 days it's worth less on day 29 than day 1. If it doesn't disappear after the transaction, it'll just be funneled through business for the 2nd tier 'money' described prev.
- bboygravity 6y ago
  I would argue that all of that is already more or less the case with the central banking system as we have it now: negative interest rates, money only insured up to 100k per person in EU bank accounts, massive decrease in buying power (look at the price of real estate/gold/crypto expressed in EUR/USD over the past 10 years), Dutch citizens pay "capital tax" over any capital over some 30k EUR (literally: spend it or we tax you). About the whitelists? Already the case. My bank account in Portugal just got frozen 2 days ago for trying to buy crypto through Coinbase (we're talking about less than 100 EUR transaction here). This involved transferring money to an Estonian account, which according to support is "a blacklisted country" (even though it's an EU member state and an attractive European country for tech related businesses). I tried transferring money from my other EU fintech bank accounts which worked perfectly fine and almost instantly (so the blacklist excuse is bs). I still can't access my funds in that account 2 days later. Computer says no. Support can't help. I'm strongly suspecting this has nothing to do with Estonia and everything to do with banks not liking crypto. So for everybody who wonders what problems crypto currencies are solving? Well, there ya go...
  - dajohnson89 6y ago
    to be fair, crypto purchases have a high incidence of chargeback fraud. this is expensive for banks. edit: i chuckled at the little britain reference :)
    - adambyrtek 6y ago
      They could easily decline a single card payment instead of suspending the whole account.
    - bboygravity 6y ago
      The risk of charge backs for banks is not really a good argument, charge backs for SEPA (eurozone) transfers initiated by the account holder himself are not a thing that exist as far as I know. You can't reverse a small erroneous transfer if you initiated it as the account holder (in contrast with credit card payments in the US for example). Furthermore, I'm not exactly the first person to buy crypto through the largest crypto exchange in the world (Coinbase) with such a Portuguese bank account. They know this Coinbase bank account, they know what it's for (buying crypto) and they know it's not a scam.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mantap 6y ago
  All of these could be circumvented though. For instance, you are given X and have to spend it by the end of the month. So you sell your X to someone who does want to spend money and they give you something in return (e.g. cryptocurrency) that you can save. Or you just buy some object such as gold jewellery that has a measurable value. This kind of direct interference with money never works. People just find ways around it, and if they can't, then the money loses its value.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >So you sell your X to someone who does want to spend money and they give you something in return (e.g. cryptocurrency) that you can save. Or you just buy some object such as gold jewellery that has a measurable value. presumably if they're going through that much effort to implement this, they'll prevent this from happening. eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
- tim333 6y ago
  They are unlikely I think to put more restrictions on central bank digital currency than they do on regular fiat currency. Though those are getting worse - I just got a demand from a brokers of proof of "sources of wealth' ie. where my money came from, which is the first time that has happened in 40 years of having banks accs & stocks. How many people have documentary proof of how they got money 35 years ago - in my case? And that's not because I'm dodgy - IB UK are doing it for all customers - coming to a financial institution serving you soon probably.
- fuoqi 6y ago
  >give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it. This will erode all incentive to save. If forces consumption instead of preservation. Arguably money should not be used for savings in the first place. Some problems of the modern monetary system arise from the fact that money conflate two functions: medium for trade and tool for savings. After doing something useful for economy and acquiring money for it, you have two options: either you buy someone else's work or you invest somewhere (effectively you lend your useful contribution to someone). The first option is a relatively short-lived, think of money as a reputation system, you are more likely to care about a favor done days ago, not decades ago. Another way of looking on it is that it is easier to compare merit of deeds which were done close in time. But the second option has all the risks and difficulties associated with investments. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend works of Silvio Gesell, it's somewhat outdated, but still quite interesting even in modern times.
mikro2nd 6y ago
I find it interesting that the paper focusses on Central Bank Digital Currencies and Global Stablecoins, but pretends not to see/prefers not to deal with the elephant in the room - Bitcoin. If anything is a candidate for a potential Reserve Currency, BTC is it, imho. Deep in the footnotes comes the contorted logic,"According to the IMF Treatment of Crypto Assets in Macroeconomic Statistics, crypto assets such as Bitcoin do not meet the definition of a financial asset—and hence currency—in macroeconomic statistics." and presumably that's what lets them off the hook, nevertheless, the ONE payment-rail that BTC fits perfectly is precisely that of international settlements between Central Banks/countries - such settlements typically involve the large-scale transfer of assets, they're not especially time-sensitive, and the transfer cost is inconsequential (and in the case of BTC negligible against the values transferred). So I'm still left wondering: Why the aversion? Fear? Lack of control by recognised "authorities"? Their argument that it's "too volatile" is largely untrue over the past year or two, with Bitcoin showing no greater volatility than any of the world's fiat currencies, so I doubt that's the factor at play.
- jononor 6y ago
  What do you mean by "Bitcoin showing no greater volatility than any of the world's fiat currencies"? I pulled up BTC/USD and EUR/USD https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=XBT&to=USD&view=2Y https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=XBT&to=USD&view=2Y https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD&view=2Y https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD&view=2Y In the last 1 year, I see BTC low of 5000 and high of 12000, a 40% difference. And EUR at 1.06 to 1.20, about 12% difference. The year before was worse for BTC and better for EUR. 3x the volatility is quite considerable.
  - demosito666 6y ago
    Not that bitcoin is not volatile (it sure as hell is), but you're picking the most stable currencies in the world and comparing them to a crypto asset that is younger than a kindergarden class. Try building the same graphs for 3rd or even 2nd world currencies and observe that they might have even worse volatility. I live in a country whose currencies devaluated in order of trillion times in 20th century if you count multiple "monetary reforms" and "denominations".
hamilyon2 6y ago
The traditional capitalist economy with gold and then dollar bills was adequate for a long time. Still ground to halt during great depression. I argue that it is on it's limits now. Long-term prosperity now depends on central banks making right decisions every time there is a hiccup. This should not be like that. It should be more automatic. Ubi or not, relief funds should be in place when they are truly needed. Short-term projects should be funded without borrowing excess funds from future generations. Ultra long term projects should be possible without some crazy political effort. Central banks can do all of above, if they have better visibility and, yes, control of how money moves, what ownership structure is
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
v4dok 6y ago
I was in many crypto presentations during the 2018 BTC rise. The crypto-anarchists (left and right leaning) were getting their spotlight and laying out their "dream". Basically an updated version of Kropotkin's and Bakunin's work for the blockchain-era. I really don't get what is the hate with the central banks getting control over the money. Yes they are not appointed by the Government but it does not matter, the moment they gain such power, they will become political. At least, at allows countries to have complete control over their currency and cut the middleman when it comes to monetary policy. ECB and FED throw all this money into quantitative easing now, and the real economy gets nothing. BTC as a global reserve is a pipedream, the only global and eternal reserve are big guns. BTC as a means of transaction is a dystopia ready to happen. No country is able to increase BTC supply, hence its a highway to unbelievable inequality, and no monetary policy control. Also, good luck enacting fiscal policy in an economy purely based on untraceable cash.
- rsrx 6y ago
  Care to elaborate how is bitcoin untraceable exactly?
- nine_k 6y ago
  Look, there was a gold-pegged currency without any digital equivalent, all in the form of untraceable cash. It was, for instance, the US dollar as late as 50 years ago. Back in 1950s people in the US were economically secure at currently unbelievable levels. Or, say, 100-120 years ago the US experienced colossal economic growth, while levels of inequality were lower than today's. I would rather posit that central banks doing monetary policy tricks with fiat money are increasing inequality and give rise to crazy and detrimental financial schemes. I agree about the big guns, though.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    Statists forget that insane monetary policy and extreme wealth inequality happened under their own fiat banking system. We are in a debt-based world where savers are punished for trying to improve their lives. It’s absurd.
- 6y ago
anm89 6y ago
All of the people talking about bitcoin here are misunderstanding how central banks are using the term digital currencies The CBDCs themselves have 0 to do with crypto. They are no more digital than your bank account in 1985 was and not using any technology newer than that. They are just normal dollars held directly by citizens at thhe central bank which is useful as a monetary policy tool. Sure you can tokenize something to create a stable coin but that still had none of the interesting properties of a Blockchain. It just makes itt marginally easier to interact with that ecosystem.

97 points by aero88883 6y ago

It is going to be interesting in a few years to see how mush they will push the digital wallet for every person.

We already have a digital Euro/Dollar/Yen, just look at the banking app on your phone or the transactions you do with a bank or credit card. But I'm very scared to see what those digital wallets for CBDC will turn into. If central banks get control over money flows they can do horrible stuff: * set a maximum limit on the amount of money you are allowed to have/save in your CBDC wallet. * give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it (by taking the excess away at the end of the month or topping it up to a limit). This will erode all incentive to save. If forces consumption instead of preservation. * work with a whitelist of acceptable ways to spent the money. You want to sent some money to someone who is not a legal resident/lives abroad/is on a black list for xyz reason? Though luck... * set a "transaction" price / hidden tax on less trustworthy or less "wanted" persons or company's. Like when you want to buy liquor/a gun/give to a church you pay 5% transaction costs, but when you pay your rent the transaction costs are 0%. * in a very real sense untraceable money is privacy and making money traceable is taking privacy away. We may not have something to hide but there is nothing I want them to see either... Revelation 13:16,17 says "It puts under compulsion all people—the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free and the slaves—that these should be marked, and that nobody can buy or sell except a person having the mark"

therein 6y ago
Attach those digital wallets to biometrics and just like that, we have the nightmare to which you are alluding. Going against the zeigeist again but if something gets pushed onto us for something silly like "pandemic preparedness" or "contact & trace" like 9/11 has brought onto us...that offers identity management that can be expanded into a system like this... If that happens, can we please stop pretending like something about biology and infectious diseases has fundamentally changed because of COVID for a second and get back to our senses... We as a global society are clearly prone to collective hysteria whether we have been brought here by a series of unfortunate events and coincidences or by malice pushing their agenda. Science loves being proven wrong, science loves getting to the bottom of things. There is nothing wrong with worshiping science but scientist worship is a part of it. We are all humans with our egos, trouble admitting being wrong, or simply personal gain from acting a certain way. Many of us just go with things to fit in, or have a career or just to make ends meet. Numbers can be fudged. Everyone should have the stance of "show me" before believing. And you can't just take what media shows you at the face value. Reenactments, B-roll footage, the whole thing is a lot less "real" than we are lead to believe. It is not a pandemic if you need to be told it is a pandemic. You are losing your rights and freedoms because people are scared. If you were alive during 9/11, doesn't this feel eerily familiar? Doesn't it feel exactly like it feels when the second plane hit on 9/11? Scare me and take my rights and freedom. Can't you see people have the same emotional reaction when you try to get people to question the official COVID narrative that you see when you try to get them to think outside the official 9/11 narrative? We are a lot less free now than we were before 9/11. And we are not any safer. The same is about to happen if not happening right now. We are all being played. Open your eyes and question even the sources you trusted for years. Just because your views aligned with a source for years doesn't mean they are on your side. They can be fooled too. This isn't about intention. We are all human. We are all fallible and this is about to get worse unless we all open our eyes and stop repeating the narrative the media is feeding everyone.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pcdoodle 6y ago
  "It is not a pandemic if you need to be told it is a pandemic." I'm using that, thanks.
- dannyw 6y ago
  Thank you. Check out this recent AMA from a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University: https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/jcxsb1/ask_me_anything_dr_jay_bhattacharya/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/jcxsb1/...
mschuster91 6y ago
> set a "transaction" price / hidden tax on less trustworthy or less "wanted" persons or company's. Like when you want to buy liquor/a gun/give to a church you pay 5% transaction costs, but when you pay your rent the transaction costs are 0%. That is what happens already today, you just don't notice it as a consumer as the vendor pays the CC bill.
tsjq 6y ago
>give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it (by taking the excess away at the end of the month or topping it up to a limit). that could be an interesting one for Universal Basic Income .
- SailingSperm 6y ago
  It's not, and doesn't work. Firstly, it'll just get turned into something else (by spending/buying with it) that holds value and is sought after/tradable/fungible - Eg. Alcohol, gold, drugs, x_equiptment. Plus, if the money deletes after say 30 days it's worth less on day 29 than day 1. If it doesn't disappear after the transaction, it'll just be funneled through business for the 2nd tier 'money' described prev.
bboygravity 6y ago
I would argue that all of that is already more or less the case with the central banking system as we have it now: negative interest rates, money only insured up to 100k per person in EU bank accounts, massive decrease in buying power (look at the price of real estate/gold/crypto expressed in EUR/USD over the past 10 years), Dutch citizens pay "capital tax" over any capital over some 30k EUR (literally: spend it or we tax you). About the whitelists? Already the case. My bank account in Portugal just got frozen 2 days ago for trying to buy crypto through Coinbase (we're talking about less than 100 EUR transaction here). This involved transferring money to an Estonian account, which according to support is "a blacklisted country" (even though it's an EU member state and an attractive European country for tech related businesses). I tried transferring money from my other EU fintech bank accounts which worked perfectly fine and almost instantly (so the blacklist excuse is bs). I still can't access my funds in that account 2 days later. Computer says no. Support can't help. I'm strongly suspecting this has nothing to do with Estonia and everything to do with banks not liking crypto. So for everybody who wonders what problems crypto currencies are solving? Well, there ya go...
- dajohnson89 6y ago
  to be fair, crypto purchases have a high incidence of chargeback fraud. this is expensive for banks. edit: i chuckled at the little britain reference :)
  - adambyrtek 6y ago
    They could easily decline a single card payment instead of suspending the whole account.
  - bboygravity 6y ago
    The risk of charge backs for banks is not really a good argument, charge backs for SEPA (eurozone) transfers initiated by the account holder himself are not a thing that exist as far as I know. You can't reverse a small erroneous transfer if you initiated it as the account holder (in contrast with credit card payments in the US for example). Furthermore, I'm not exactly the first person to buy crypto through the largest crypto exchange in the world (Coinbase) with such a Portuguese bank account. They know this Coinbase bank account, they know what it's for (buying crypto) and they know it's not a scam.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mantap 6y ago
All of these could be circumvented though. For instance, you are given X and have to spend it by the end of the month. So you sell your X to someone who does want to spend money and they give you something in return (e.g. cryptocurrency) that you can save. Or you just buy some object such as gold jewellery that has a measurable value. This kind of direct interference with money never works. People just find ways around it, and if they can't, then the money loses its value.
- gruez 6y ago
  >So you sell your X to someone who does want to spend money and they give you something in return (e.g. cryptocurrency) that you can save. Or you just buy some object such as gold jewellery that has a measurable value. presumably if they're going through that much effort to implement this, they'll prevent this from happening. eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
tim333 6y ago
They are unlikely I think to put more restrictions on central bank digital currency than they do on regular fiat currency. Though those are getting worse - I just got a demand from a brokers of proof of "sources of wealth' ie. where my money came from, which is the first time that has happened in 40 years of having banks accs & stocks. How many people have documentary proof of how they got money 35 years ago - in my case? And that's not because I'm dodgy - IB UK are doing it for all customers - coming to a financial institution serving you soon probably.
fuoqi 6y ago
>give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it. This will erode all incentive to save. If forces consumption instead of preservation. Arguably money should not be used for savings in the first place. Some problems of the modern monetary system arise from the fact that money conflate two functions: medium for trade and tool for savings. After doing something useful for economy and acquiring money for it, you have two options: either you buy someone else's work or you invest somewhere (effectively you lend your useful contribution to someone). The first option is a relatively short-lived, think of money as a reputation system, you are more likely to care about a favor done days ago, not decades ago. Another way of looking on it is that it is easier to compare merit of deeds which were done close in time. But the second option has all the risks and difficulties associated with investments. If you are interested in this topic, I recommend works of Silvio Gesell, it's somewhat outdated, but still quite interesting even in modern times.

mikro2nd 6y ago

I find it interesting that the paper focusses on Central Bank Digital Currencies and Global Stablecoins, but pretends not to see/prefers not to deal with the elephant in the room - Bitcoin. If anything is a candidate for a potential Reserve Currency, BTC is it, imho. Deep in the footnotes comes the contorted logic,"According to the IMF Treatment of Crypto Assets in Macroeconomic Statistics, crypto assets such as Bitcoin do not meet the definition of a financial asset—and hence currency—in macroeconomic statistics." and presumably that's what lets them off the hook, nevertheless, the ONE payment-rail that BTC fits perfectly is precisely that of international settlements between Central Banks/countries - such settlements typically involve the large-scale transfer of assets, they're not especially time-sensitive, and the transfer cost is inconsequential (and in the case of BTC negligible against the values transferred). So I'm still left wondering: Why the aversion? Fear? Lack of control by recognised "authorities"? Their argument that it's "too volatile" is largely untrue over the past year or two, with Bitcoin showing no greater volatility than any of the world's fiat currencies, so I doubt that's the factor at play.

jononor 6y ago
What do you mean by "Bitcoin showing no greater volatility than any of the world's fiat currencies"? I pulled up BTC/USD and EUR/USD https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=XBT&to=USD&view=2Y https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=XBT&to=USD&view=2Y https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD&view=2Y https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD&view=2Y In the last 1 year, I see BTC low of 5000 and high of 12000, a 40% difference. And EUR at 1.06 to 1.20, about 12% difference. The year before was worse for BTC and better for EUR. 3x the volatility is quite considerable.
- demosito666 6y ago
  Not that bitcoin is not volatile (it sure as hell is), but you're picking the most stable currencies in the world and comparing them to a crypto asset that is younger than a kindergarden class. Try building the same graphs for 3rd or even 2nd world currencies and observe that they might have even worse volatility. I live in a country whose currencies devaluated in order of trillion times in 20th century if you count multiple "monetary reforms" and "denominations".

hamilyon2 6y ago

The traditional capitalist economy with gold and then dollar bills was adequate for a long time. Still ground to halt during great depression. I argue that it is on it's limits now. Long-term prosperity now depends on central banks making right decisions every time there is a hiccup. This should not be like that. It should be more automatic. Ubi or not, relief funds should be in place when they are truly needed. Short-term projects should be funded without borrowing excess funds from future generations. Ultra long term projects should be possible without some crazy political effort. Central banks can do all of above, if they have better visibility and, yes, control of how money moves, what ownership structure is

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

v4dok 6y ago

I was in many crypto presentations during the 2018 BTC rise. The crypto-anarchists (left and right leaning) were getting their spotlight and laying out their "dream". Basically an updated version of Kropotkin's and Bakunin's work for the blockchain-era. I really don't get what is the hate with the central banks getting control over the money. Yes they are not appointed by the Government but it does not matter, the moment they gain such power, they will become political. At least, at allows countries to have complete control over their currency and cut the middleman when it comes to monetary policy. ECB and FED throw all this money into quantitative easing now, and the real economy gets nothing. BTC as a global reserve is a pipedream, the only global and eternal reserve are big guns. BTC as a means of transaction is a dystopia ready to happen. No country is able to increase BTC supply, hence its a highway to unbelievable inequality, and no monetary policy control. Also, good luck enacting fiscal policy in an economy purely based on untraceable cash.

rsrx 6y ago
Care to elaborate how is bitcoin untraceable exactly?
nine_k 6y ago
Look, there was a gold-pegged currency without any digital equivalent, all in the form of untraceable cash. It was, for instance, the US dollar as late as 50 years ago. Back in 1950s people in the US were economically secure at currently unbelievable levels. Or, say, 100-120 years ago the US experienced colossal economic growth, while levels of inequality were lower than today's. I would rather posit that central banks doing monetary policy tricks with fiat money are increasing inequality and give rise to crazy and detrimental financial schemes. I agree about the big guns, though.
- seibelj 6y ago
  Statists forget that insane monetary policy and extreme wealth inequality happened under their own fiat banking system. We are in a debt-based world where savers are punished for trying to improve their lives. It’s absurd.
6y ago

anm89 6y ago

All of the people talking about bitcoin here are misunderstanding how central banks are using the term digital currencies The CBDCs themselves have 0 to do with crypto. They are no more digital than your bank account in 1985 was and not using any technology newer than that. They are just normal dollars held directly by citizens at thhe central bank which is useful as a monetary policy tool. Sure you can tokenize something to create a stable coin but that still had none of the interesting properties of a Blockchain. It just makes itt marginally easier to interact with that ecosystem.