3 ms·
They're not preventing movement of physical currency - they are preventing use of the existing network and systems to easily move debts around so that it is exc
by sailfast 5y ago
They're not preventing movement of physical currency - they are preventing use of the existing network and systems to easily move debts around so that it is exceedingly difficult and you have to move physical currency instead of bits / IOUs.
Maybe a distinction without a difference to some, but it makes sense that a country that bucks the consensus of a number of member nations would be excluded from a consortium of institutions like this. (Leaving discussion of disparate impact and whether this actually achieves national goals for another forum)
I don't personally see a huge distinction between crypto and global banking. Just a different set of ledger-holders. Miners, instead of institutions. Just because it's a different set of folks controlling the ledger doesn't mean this can't happen with a blockchain. Maybe I missed something and the tech prevents this somehow? But not that I've been able to figure out.
- rswail 5y agoThe main difference I can see is that the Fed controls the dollar. It is the central account holder. Miners are distributed and there is the well known problem of 51% of the mining pool being controlled by a single party, but they would have to control 100% of the mining pool to be the equivalent of the Fed.
- sailfast 5y agoThe dollar is only one currency. SWIFT is the network that allows transactions in multiple currencies across banks easily. There are a huge number of sovereign currencies in the world that you can buy things with, not just one. Probably more central banks than there are large mining pools. If mining pools conspired to, say, fork a chain because somebody stole a lot of tokens due to a bug, it amounts to the same kind of control.