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There’s another name for a central bank digital currency. It’s called “a bank account at the central bank”. Hardly Orwellian, but hardly innovative either. Tra
by neilwilson 5y ago
There’s another name for a central bank digital currency. It’s called “a bank account at the central bank”. Hardly Orwellian, but hardly innovative either.
Traditional paper money is actually a zero interest bearer bond. Essentially a simple receipt for liabilities at the central bank that can be passed around like an endorsed cheque.
Since regulators have steadily been eliminating the abilities of cheques to act as promissory notes rather than bills of exchange for decades, it’s hardly surprising to see their next assault on the “bearer transfer process” of traditional paper money.
The whole point is to change it from a promissory note to a bill of exchange at the very least.
- nine_k 5y agoWhat would be Orwellian is the need for every citizen to have an account at the central bank to use the monetary system at all. Paper money leave much, much fainter trail of transactions than a centrally mandated and controlled digital currency. It's the pervasive tracking aspect the people find Orwellian.
- neilwilson 5y agoA currency is a simple public monopoly. Therefore standard rules around monopolies apply. If you don't like that, then don't use it - and stand the inconvenience.
- nextaccountic 5y ago> If you don't like that, then don't use it In many places, not accepting legal tender is illegal
- neilwilson 5y agoNot really. Legal tender doesn't generally work like that as a concept. It's largely to do with settling of debts - in that you cannot insist on being paid in cows from somebody who doesn't have any cows. The law will permit the debt to be settled in a defined fungible numeraire and will consider that to end the matter. But where it does operate like that, that's another example of a public monopoly at work. You can always contract under the laws of another jurisdiction if it bothers you that much. As ever it is free as in freedom, not free as in beer. True freedom can be very inconvenient.
- gruez 5y ago>You can always contract under the laws of another jurisdiction if it bothers you that much. "don't like a given law in your jurisdiction (county/state/country)? Just move to another one!"
- neilwilson 5y agoContracting under different laws is just like contracting in a different currency. No moving required. As Argentina found to its cost with dollar bonds issued under English law.