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"Man who benefits enormously from status quo worried about change"
by djohnston 4y ago
"Man who benefits enormously from status quo worried about change"
- criddell 4y agoHow would Dr. Stiglitz be affected by change?
- rglullis 4y agoHe wouldn't, that is why he favors it. He has nothing to lose with such a proposal, no Skin in the Game.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoNo one is using crypto to facilitate legal payments in any meaningful volume. The only people who have something to lose is those who are using crypto to avoid government and regulations around AML and KYC or those getting wealthy in the ponzi.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- rglullis 4y agoNo one is using crypto for payments yet because the infrastructure is still expensive and not a viable alternative. There are plenty of use-cases where using crypto can be a better alternative for merchants (no risk of fraud and chargebacks) and consumers (micropayments where the cost of CC processing is higher than the cost of fraud, or purchases where the payee values privacy above all else - think "Ashley Madison" subscribers who'd rather not have their names on the site)
- toomuchtodo 4y agoCheck in next year when FedNow instant payments are live, and you can move up to USD $500k ($25k at initial launch, increasing over time as the system shakes out) at a time for 5 cents per transfer. It is currently in preprod, and being actively tested between hundreds of banks and financial services firms. https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-fednow https://www.moderntreasury.com/learn/what-is-fednow https://frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/community/news/012521-announcing-pilot-program-participants.html https://frbservices.org/financial-services/fednow/community/... https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/08/31/fednow-the-federal-reserves-planned-instant-payments-service/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/08/31/fednow-the-federa...
- rglullis 4y agoRight, because as long as the USA has a system for them, all is good for everyone else in the world. /s Anyway, even FedNow is not enough. Europe has SEPA, Brazil has Pix. India has NPCI... and yet, they still haven't solved the side for micropayments and transactions still can be reversed and are not anonymous.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoAnonymous digital payments cannot coexist with government KYC and AML regulatory requirements. You're asking to solve for violating financial regulatory mechanisms with technology. It's a data privacy and governance issue. Perhaps you use some sort of fiat tumbler like privacy.com enabled for instant payments, where the merchant doesn't know who you are, but the money transmitter will still be required to keep records of the transaction and have a license. (disclosure: i work in risk/compliance at a fintech)
- rglullis 4y agoAnd pretty much like every over-reaching policy, it will be circumvented by the bad actors and be used to oppress law-abiding people and to keep the status quo. Still, crypto could be used for the payment and KYC be done through other means.
- tablespoon 4y ago> ...and transactions still can be reversed... That's a feature. I have no idea why people think irreversible transactions are a desirable feature. It's like a credit card where you're responsible for all charges, even if your card was stolen.
- rglullis 4y agonot for the merchant.
- tablespoon 4y ago
- boringg 4y agoI prefer my economics analysis to come from people who don't have skin in the game either way.
- rglullis 4y agoEvery analyst is recommending one choice, one way or another. "Not taking an action" is a choice. "Shutting down cryptocurrency" is a choice to shut out a bunch of people who can not participate in the current system. The big issue is in finding out the upsides and the downsides of each of these choices, and who should pay for the consequences if the actions backfire. This is why we should ask for those analysts to actually put some Skin in the Game.
- boringg 4y agoNo if they have skin in the game they inherently want you to buy into whatever they have done creating an analysis that is flawed and intended to sell you.
- rglullis 4y agoAs long as the sellers are exposed to the consequences of being wrong, I don't see anything wrong with it. I'd rather have an expert saying "I am so convinced of my opinion that I'm willing to risk facing ruin over it" than some academic guiding the implementation of key policies as large-scale experiments, where the population has no other choice but "trust the experts" and see these very same experts walking away scot-free when their ideas blows up in the face of reality.
- boringg 4y agoHow does he benefit from status quo?
- faangiq 4y agoHe’s a high priest of the economics cult.