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Look, you don’t need to trust or believe me, but every major country central bank is evaluating switching to cryptocurrencies and real-time instant payment sett

Look, you don’t need to trust or believe me, but every major country central bank is evaluating switching to cryptocurrencies and real-time instant payment settlement systems. Google keywords “Central Bank Digital Currency”. Central Banks, FIs, and FinTechs are hyper aware of the value of distributed ledgers.

acdha 5y ago
I think you’re right but that comes from mixing a couple of distinct concepts: most blockchain fans class distributed ledgers as a separate category because they don’t need anonymity and the expense of proof-of-work mechanisms. I’d be unsurprised if whatever the next round of modernization ends up being is called a blockchain for marketing reasons (unless the big consulting firms have moved on by then) but ends up being a far more conventional ledger system because they have existing trust relationships and don’t even want anonymity.
hakfoo 5y ago
Are they valuing a distributed ledger, or are the various CBDC projects more of a faster-horses answer for ACH? A significant part of the need for distributed systems goes away when you're no longer trying to be trustless, and much of the role of a central bank is to be a central anchor of trust. They can run the whole damn ledger, and there's a solid case for doing so being part of a modern financial system. The more sinister factor I could see is that bad actors like distributed systems because they represent a workaround for KYC/AML/capital control regulations. If Chase allows an account opened by $boogeyman_of_the_week, heads will roll. There's nobody that can be readily sued or intimidated to encourage a decentralized network into excluding a participant.
pgwhalen 5y ago
CBDC’s are anything but cryptocurrencies. This is a major misunderstanding of why central banks are pursuing them.
- politician 5y ago
  You’re correct about the internal layers, but incorrect about the external layers of the proposed systems.

acdha 5y ago

I think you’re right but that comes from mixing a couple of distinct concepts: most blockchain fans class distributed ledgers as a separate category because they don’t need anonymity and the expense of proof-of-work mechanisms. I’d be unsurprised if whatever the next round of modernization ends up being is called a blockchain for marketing reasons (unless the big consulting firms have moved on by then) but ends up being a far more conventional ledger system because they have existing trust relationships and don’t even want anonymity.

hakfoo 5y ago

Are they valuing a distributed ledger, or are the various CBDC projects more of a faster-horses answer for ACH? A significant part of the need for distributed systems goes away when you're no longer trying to be trustless, and much of the role of a central bank is to be a central anchor of trust. They can run the whole damn ledger, and there's a solid case for doing so being part of a modern financial system. The more sinister factor I could see is that bad actors like distributed systems because they represent a workaround for KYC/AML/capital control regulations. If Chase allows an account opened by $boogeyman_of_the_week, heads will roll. There's nobody that can be readily sued or intimidated to encourage a decentralized network into excluding a participant.

pgwhalen 5y ago

CBDC’s are anything but cryptocurrencies. This is a major misunderstanding of why central banks are pursuing them.

politician 5y ago
You’re correct about the internal layers, but incorrect about the external layers of the proposed systems.