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Can someone with optimism and enthusiasm about CBDCs enlighten me how will this NOT devolve into a totalitarian dystopia with "programmed" money that can contro

Can someone with optimism and enthusiasm about CBDCs enlighten me how will this NOT devolve into a totalitarian dystopia with "programmed" money that can control the population down to the individual level?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
f6v 4y ago
You don’t need to control an individual. You need to control the population as a whole. Which governments do now, with taxes and other policies.
- yownie 4y ago
  well met, nothing you just wrote addresses what OP asked.
- no_time 4y ago
  >You don’t need to control an individual. People who lived in Warsaw pact countries where you could only buy meat with a "ticket" would disagree with this. There is a very real desire in the ruling class to be this invasive.
  - jevgeni 4y ago
    ... in a planned economy.
    - thepangolino 4y ago
      [dead]
    - tastyfreeze 4y ago
      Which is the inevitable result of a CBDC. There is no way that a government can resist the temptation of control that CBDCs permit.
    - int_19h 4y ago
      There is an increasingly popular sentiment in the West that dealing with income inequality and climate change requires an economy that is planned to a significant extent.
- sebow 4y ago
  There's a little dichotomy here. If you try to control the population as a whole "head-on" you'd get decent backlash, especially in countries where such moves have been rejected.[Anecdotally i can speak only for EE] However if you try to convince the masses at an individual level, (i.e a bottom-> top approach) you can have more success, assuming you do this in a paced manner and not rush the tyranny (because that would be obvious). Nowadays the latter approach 'works' because most people have low attention span and such grifts go mostly unnoticed, or at least enforced with pretexts like security, protect the kids, etc. The gov. vs the individual is an uneven fight. The same cannot be said about the gov. vs the people.
swarnie 4y ago
The old pound isn't going anywhere? And maybe (dont kill me for this) some people need an adult in the room on occasions. Maybe (again, hold yourself back) money given by the state should be spent in supermarkets, not on disco biscuits. A degree of control over that doesn't sound bad at all.
- _glsb 4y ago
  the only thing the negative voting on this comment shows is the utter lack of understanding of econ or governance topics by HN commenters.
  - swarnie 4y ago
    Its not a problem, i understand we are a very small bubble which doesn't reflect society as a whole.
    - jevgeni 4y ago
      True, but the anti-intellectual arrogance of HN for a few select topics, like for example, people downvoting your comments, is irritating.
- no_time 4y ago
  >And maybe (dont kill me for this) some people need an adult in the room on occasions. To some extent I agree. The problem is that historically the limit of this state control was technology itself. Except now we are far too advanced to keep technology as this limit. Money given by the state is an entirely different thing. If you need the state's money, you are ought to play by it's rules. What I'm worried about is the state meddling with personal financials with pinpoint accuracy.
- gilleain 4y ago
  (For those unaware, 'disco biscuits' is slang for Ecstasy pills, I believe). Sure, so it seems reasonable to prevent people spending benefits on drugs. However is there not a slippery slope towards preventing people buying (say) unhealthy food? I can imagine some 'luxury money' that can be spent on anything and 'basic money' that you can't use to buy a pack of crisps or a bar of chocolate, only carrots and apples...
williamtrask 4y ago
I find it intriguing that this kind of project will plausibly be the true legacy of the crypto community’s efforts. This is both ironic and tragic as their intentions were the opposite in the wake of the 2008 crash. I think it’s also related to the lack of trained political scientists in the crypto movement. A first year undergrad is taught that real political power comes from whomever has a monopoly on violence. In this light crypto was always doomed to fail in this way. It had little to no affect on the underlying real power. It only worked 1 later up (monetary supply / taxation / etc.).
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  What does the crypto community have to do with this? A CBDC isn't even a cryptocurrency, and has no connection to them at all.
  - Fervicus 4y ago
    Programmable money, even though it's centralized.
    - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
      Also known as a "bank account"?
      - Fervicus 4y ago
        Money in my bank account cannot have an expiry date, which is something that would be possible with this new digital currency. The bank cannot limit where I can spend it, at least not as easily.
        mitthrowaway2 4y ago
        To be clear, that's a tremendous concern, but it doesn't have any connection to crypto. The reason that the money in your bank account can't expire is because if a private bank tried to do that, it would trigger a bank run - everyone would withdraw their funds as paper, or transfer them to a different bank. The reason the CBDC is different is because there cannot be a run on a central bank as the issuer of currency, and it alone can assert that its unit of account is a legal replacement for paper banknotes. So it can establish policies like an 'expiry date' for deposited funds, which a private bank could not (at least, not until the central bank does first). Banks certainly can limit where you spend your money though - again, with the exception of cash withdrawals.
jevgeni 4y ago
Has the SWIFT payment system devolved into a totalitarian dystopia?
- no_time 4y ago
  No. The aspect of programmable money is currently missing. Also with cash being a viable escape hatch, I'm quite okay with the pros and cons of the current status quo. What I'm worried about are the new proposals and the gradual erosion of cash as an escape hatch.
- fwungy 4y ago
  They tried using it to control Russia. Power will use the tools it has available will it wants to assert itself.
- int_19h 4y ago
  I did have an experience of having an international wire transfer denied and my account forcibly closed by a US bank because the name of the recipient matched someone on their prohibited person list. They did admit that it's not the same person, but didn't seem to care - my impression was that they were much more concerned with staying "on the right side" of govt regulations than they were about losing a customer. Is that an example of a totalitarian dystopia? Not really, but it's not "the land of the free", either. I'm thankful that technology like BTC (or better yet, Monero) exists so that this kind of bullshit is merely an inconvenience and not a blocker.
makeitdouble 4y ago
From the other side of the argument, would you see a future in the next decades where cash is still relevant and significant amount of money can change ownership completely anonymously? This might still be true for some countries, but most of us are already in a world where paper money is a “just in case” artifact and the gov could trace every single monetary transaction in the last 10 years. The real fight isn’t on clinging to legacy systems, but to get safeguards baked in the new systems and have governments that care a minimum about their citizens. I mean, you’ll never win again your gov. going full berserk, or at what price.
- no_time 4y ago
  > From the other side of the argument, would you see a future in the next decades where cash is still relevant and significant amount of money can change ownership completely anonymously? No. Also, I see CBDCs as a further step along this trajectory. Even more control. Even more granularity. >The real fight isn’t on clinging to legacy systems, but to get safeguards baked in the new systems and have governments that care a minimum about their citizens. I agree. Though I'm afraid human psychology is not compatible with the idea of "safeguards". As long as there is a 0.0000001% chance that this will help catch some pedophile or drug cartel, I bet there won't be widespread push for safeguards. Much like how there isn't any with internet surveillance or facial recognition in public spaces. Naturally you might be asking, so what do I propose to solve this. To which I answer: Nothing. I don't really see a way out of the hole we are digging right now.
  - makeitdouble 4y ago
    I somewhat optimistically see two different vectors that could move independently: - untraceability: it’s probably out of the window. I don’t know how much we still had, but with full digital money everywhere it’s dead and buried. - practical privacy: could probably be saved. It’s hope more than anything, but just as we currently don’t have a social score system while technically all the pieces are in place, I think digital money would stay in the same status quo as long as we keep the same social values. Basically, we already have safeguards against widespread abuse of our digital systems, otherwise we’d already be in the same social state as China, I don’t see any technical barrier to that. The question would be on wether we can preserve that going forward.
imtringued 4y ago
Good thing we don't already live in such a dystopia. I mean, banking is digital first and cash second. Also, programmable money already exists and is called food stamps in the USA.
- no_time 4y ago
  >Good thing we don't already live in such a dystopia. Only if you think in a binary exists/doesnt't exist way. With digital payments first and cash never, this could be taken much further.
- starkd 4y ago
  Food stamps are traded for cash all the time. You get less on the dollar, but people still do it in order to use it for other things.
  - notch898a 4y ago
    Yeah this is why I hate food stamps. You can literally go to any hood, walk in front of the grocery store, and there is a burgeoning black market for the stamps (actually EBT card). They function as (discounted) cash for people who want them to be cash. Just give the cash to everyone instead of this ridiculous failed program with overhead to make sure it's just spent on food. Families actually spending it on food would have more money then because you could cut the overhead costs and pay it out to everyone.
- int_19h 4y ago
  Think of it like Android vs iOS. Android has the ability to sideload apps. The vast majority of users never even enable that, but when you need that escape hatch, it's there.
rich_sasha 4y ago
I don't like CBDCs but suspect in practice it wouldn't be very different to Visa/MasterCard duopoly. Mostly widely accepted except for some frankly quite random exceptions. You'd imagine legal protection of this should exist just the same as it exists for assets now. Eg if you get a speeding fine you are contesting (or something hing more nefarious, say you're a journalist reporting in corrupt government) the state can[not] just confiscate your property without a court decision. I was about to write "cannot" but then remembered Civil Forfeiture in the US. But my basic point is, I think most.l likely this wouldn't change things too much in practice. I still don't much like them.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > in practice it wouldn't be very different to Visa/MasterCard duopoly Now a monopoly controlled by the monetary authority, also for all payments:
- humanizersequel 4y ago
  >l likely this wouldn't change things too much in practice. You are significantly underestimating how much of the day-to-day economy happens in "under the table" cash transactions (doesn't even have to be cash, some unsophisticated casino-chip setup like Venmo or Cashapp works as well) that wouldn't stand up to the kind of scrutiny afforded by a CBDC system.
  - rich_sasha 4y ago
    Hmm, well, true. I guess I don't have much sympathy for the kind of industries that couldn't stand up to scrutiny. There are also fairly benign cases of cash-in-hand industries like builders etc., dodging tax by taking cash payments of the book, good question how that would evolve. You hit the nail on the head there btw, it would lead to a shadow economy based on some other medium of exchange, perhaps crypto. Except... How do you buy your crypto in the first place? Surely not with CBDC..!
    - humanizersequel 4y ago
CTDOCodebases 4y ago
Soma. If you start consuming it soon enough it won't be a "totalitarian dystopia". It will be a utopia!
- starkd 4y ago
  Maybe that's why they allow the fentanyl in through the border.
blitzar 4y ago
> CBDCs devolve into a totalitarian dystopia with "programmed" money that can control the population down to the individual level? How is it that Central Bank crypto will lead to a totalitarian dystopia, while BitCoin, Eth, Dog Coin, FTX coin etc are libertarian projects that will save the world?
- starkd 4y ago
  CBDC's are not cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized and implemented by various foundations with open source protocols. CBDC's are planned and implemented by a central bank.
- humanizersequel 4y ago
  The "central" in "Central Bank" isn't just there for the lulz.
MzHN 4y ago
If implemented with, or similar to, GNU Taler[1] then privacy for consumers is preserved, which is already better than credit/debit cards currently [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html https://taler.net/en/faq.html
- ursuscamp 4y ago
  Is this a chaumian mint? I have never heard of this project, it's pretty neat. There are a couple of chaumian mint systems in development in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Cashu: https://github.com/cashubtc/cashu https://github.com/cashubtc/cashu Fedminit: https://fedimint.org https://fedimint.org In Cashu, a mint is a single custodian, while Fedimint is designed around a multiple federated mints in a multisig. Both issue e-tokens signed with blind signatures. Both of them also integrate with the Lightning network, so users of the minted cash can make use of the rest of Bitcoin ecosystem for payments.
px43 4y ago
It seems to me that CBDCs cut out a lot of the friction that currently prevents people from moving towards more interesting and decentralized payment infrastructure. Any system backed by math seems to me to be strictly better than any system which is not backed by math. Legacy banking infrastructure is a dangerous mess, and needs to die. To me, the acceptance of CBDCs is an admission that the old ways are failing, and a crypto backed economy is the future. CBDCs will still need to compete with crypto assets already in existence, but at least now everything can speak the same language.
- ambientenv 4y ago
  "a lot of the friction" can be something that keeps us from sliding down a slippery slope into a quagmire beyond our control.
  - px43 4y ago
    [dead]
- starkd 4y ago
  But the current legacy system is an evolved standard. A drop-in replacement is likely to introduce a lot of unintended consequences, however beautiful in theory it may seem.
  - px43 4y ago
    There are actual, visible consequences to trying to keep the old dying system alive. It's hopelessly broken, and more important, unsustainable. For it to truly be a product of "evolution", you have to let the broken parts die.
nivenkos 4y ago
Trudeau already froze protesters' bank accounts, so I don't see much of a difference with the current system. I think the main benefits would be if we could get out of the VISA and Mastercard duopoly, and the requirement to settle trades in USD in the future.
phendrenad2 4y ago
I don't have optimism or enthusiasm for CBDC, but it seems like it's bo different from the system we have now. All transactions are already digital, tracked, reported, and can be intervened in by your government. So what changes? The money system of the world is a series of computer programs run at banks. CBDC would just be changing those systems to run... blockchain algorithms. It's actually quite pointless to apply blockchain to something thst is inherenty centralized (which is why I have no optimism for CBDCs, they're a waste of everyone's time).
Ekaros 4y ago
Up side is not to have to deal with payment processors, banks and so on, but single hopefully free or tax paid centralised system. And I don't see worries too much as most of the bad things can already be done, or simply legislated on existing institutions by governments. Nothing actually stops at least with digital money from these things being done.
Digit-Al 4y ago
I wouldn't necessarily call myself "enthusiastic" about CBDCs, but I can certainly give some reasons why I find this proposal to be "fairly reasonable". Firstly, they start off by saying that they don't think it's currently necessary and that they are just looking to the future. They then talk about the current state of affairs with more transactions being made digitally and more private entities offering some sort of online wallet. Most of these entities are not British in origin and they state that if the situation were to arise where a majority of the countries "cash" transactions were controlled by a foreign entity then this could constitute a security risk. Now, I am a very long way from being a flag waving nationalist but even I can see the sense in that. Secondly, their proposal look fairly reasonable to me. I may be misreading it horribly but as far as I can tell the BoE is proposing to be an anonymous transaction layer. The diagram specifically states that they will not have any personal information associated with the wallet. It looks like the BoE would just hold an anonymous wallet with a GUID and a value. The PIPs have your user details and GUID. When you make a payment from your wallet to some other wallet the PIP just sends a request to the BoE to transfer a sum from one GUID to another and the BoE never receives any information on the payer and payee. Because of this, it will be pretty difficult for the government to prevent any particular person making a payment, or to control how someone makes a payment. There are a huge number of private entities that will have the necessary status to get clearance to access the API, I am sure. Can you imagine the UK government trying to bully hundreds, maybe thousands of companies - some not based in the UK - into preventing payments to one person; and they would have to cover all entities because otherwise the person being targeted could just change wallet providers. It could still potentially turn bad, but it looks to my (admittedly not highly experienced eye) that the BoE is trying to design a system that is reasonably resilient to the type of tampering and control that many people fear.
khmii 4y ago
At least in the US, I just don't think this will ever work. It is ultimately only in the interest of the central bank. There are really no other participants that will be clamoring for this. I am pushing 50 and I just can't imagine I live to see the day I can't get cash from the bank when we still have absolutely worthless pennies in circulation. This is such a fundamental change to money and banking I just don't see it being widely adopted.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

f6v 4y ago

You don’t need to control an individual. You need to control the population as a whole. Which governments do now, with taxes and other policies.

yownie 4y ago
well met, nothing you just wrote addresses what OP asked.
no_time 4y ago
>You don’t need to control an individual. People who lived in Warsaw pact countries where you could only buy meat with a "ticket" would disagree with this. There is a very real desire in the ruling class to be this invasive.
- jevgeni 4y ago
  ... in a planned economy.
  - thepangolino 4y ago
    [dead]
  - tastyfreeze 4y ago
    Which is the inevitable result of a CBDC. There is no way that a government can resist the temptation of control that CBDCs permit.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    There is an increasingly popular sentiment in the West that dealing with income inequality and climate change requires an economy that is planned to a significant extent.
sebow 4y ago
There's a little dichotomy here. If you try to control the population as a whole "head-on" you'd get decent backlash, especially in countries where such moves have been rejected.[Anecdotally i can speak only for EE] However if you try to convince the masses at an individual level, (i.e a bottom-> top approach) you can have more success, assuming you do this in a paced manner and not rush the tyranny (because that would be obvious). Nowadays the latter approach 'works' because most people have low attention span and such grifts go mostly unnoticed, or at least enforced with pretexts like security, protect the kids, etc. The gov. vs the individual is an uneven fight. The same cannot be said about the gov. vs the people.

swarnie 4y ago

The old pound isn't going anywhere? And maybe (dont kill me for this) some people need an adult in the room on occasions. Maybe (again, hold yourself back) money given by the state should be spent in supermarkets, not on disco biscuits. A degree of control over that doesn't sound bad at all.

_glsb 4y ago
the only thing the negative voting on this comment shows is the utter lack of understanding of econ or governance topics by HN commenters.
- swarnie 4y ago
  Its not a problem, i understand we are a very small bubble which doesn't reflect society as a whole.
  - jevgeni 4y ago
    True, but the anti-intellectual arrogance of HN for a few select topics, like for example, people downvoting your comments, is irritating.
no_time 4y ago
>And maybe (dont kill me for this) some people need an adult in the room on occasions. To some extent I agree. The problem is that historically the limit of this state control was technology itself. Except now we are far too advanced to keep technology as this limit. Money given by the state is an entirely different thing. If you need the state's money, you are ought to play by it's rules. What I'm worried about is the state meddling with personal financials with pinpoint accuracy.
gilleain 4y ago
(For those unaware, 'disco biscuits' is slang for Ecstasy pills, I believe). Sure, so it seems reasonable to prevent people spending benefits on drugs. However is there not a slippery slope towards preventing people buying (say) unhealthy food? I can imagine some 'luxury money' that can be spent on anything and 'basic money' that you can't use to buy a pack of crisps or a bar of chocolate, only carrots and apples...

williamtrask 4y ago

I find it intriguing that this kind of project will plausibly be the true legacy of the crypto community’s efforts. This is both ironic and tragic as their intentions were the opposite in the wake of the 2008 crash. I think it’s also related to the lack of trained political scientists in the crypto movement. A first year undergrad is taught that real political power comes from whomever has a monopoly on violence. In this light crypto was always doomed to fail in this way. It had little to no affect on the underlying real power. It only worked 1 later up (monetary supply / taxation / etc.).

mitthrowaway2 4y ago
What does the crypto community have to do with this? A CBDC isn't even a cryptocurrency, and has no connection to them at all.
- Fervicus 4y ago
  Programmable money, even though it's centralized.
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    Also known as a "bank account"?
    - Fervicus 4y ago
      Money in my bank account cannot have an expiry date, which is something that would be possible with this new digital currency. The bank cannot limit where I can spend it, at least not as easily.
      - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
        To be clear, that's a tremendous concern, but it doesn't have any connection to crypto. The reason that the money in your bank account can't expire is because if a private bank tried to do that, it would trigger a bank run - everyone would withdraw their funds as paper, or transfer them to a different bank. The reason the CBDC is different is because there cannot be a run on a central bank as the issuer of currency, and it alone can assert that its unit of account is a legal replacement for paper banknotes. So it can establish policies like an 'expiry date' for deposited funds, which a private bank could not (at least, not until the central bank does first). Banks certainly can limit where you spend your money though - again, with the exception of cash withdrawals.

jevgeni 4y ago

Has the SWIFT payment system devolved into a totalitarian dystopia?

no_time 4y ago
No. The aspect of programmable money is currently missing. Also with cash being a viable escape hatch, I'm quite okay with the pros and cons of the current status quo. What I'm worried about are the new proposals and the gradual erosion of cash as an escape hatch.
fwungy 4y ago
They tried using it to control Russia. Power will use the tools it has available will it wants to assert itself.
int_19h 4y ago
I did have an experience of having an international wire transfer denied and my account forcibly closed by a US bank because the name of the recipient matched someone on their prohibited person list. They did admit that it's not the same person, but didn't seem to care - my impression was that they were much more concerned with staying "on the right side" of govt regulations than they were about losing a customer. Is that an example of a totalitarian dystopia? Not really, but it's not "the land of the free", either. I'm thankful that technology like BTC (or better yet, Monero) exists so that this kind of bullshit is merely an inconvenience and not a blocker.

makeitdouble 4y ago

From the other side of the argument, would you see a future in the next decades where cash is still relevant and significant amount of money can change ownership completely anonymously? This might still be true for some countries, but most of us are already in a world where paper money is a “just in case” artifact and the gov could trace every single monetary transaction in the last 10 years. The real fight isn’t on clinging to legacy systems, but to get safeguards baked in the new systems and have governments that care a minimum about their citizens. I mean, you’ll never win again your gov. going full berserk, or at what price.

no_time 4y ago
> From the other side of the argument, would you see a future in the next decades where cash is still relevant and significant amount of money can change ownership completely anonymously? No. Also, I see CBDCs as a further step along this trajectory. Even more control. Even more granularity. >The real fight isn’t on clinging to legacy systems, but to get safeguards baked in the new systems and have governments that care a minimum about their citizens. I agree. Though I'm afraid human psychology is not compatible with the idea of "safeguards". As long as there is a 0.0000001% chance that this will help catch some pedophile or drug cartel, I bet there won't be widespread push for safeguards. Much like how there isn't any with internet surveillance or facial recognition in public spaces. Naturally you might be asking, so what do I propose to solve this. To which I answer: Nothing. I don't really see a way out of the hole we are digging right now.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  I somewhat optimistically see two different vectors that could move independently: - untraceability: it’s probably out of the window. I don’t know how much we still had, but with full digital money everywhere it’s dead and buried. - practical privacy: could probably be saved. It’s hope more than anything, but just as we currently don’t have a social score system while technically all the pieces are in place, I think digital money would stay in the same status quo as long as we keep the same social values. Basically, we already have safeguards against widespread abuse of our digital systems, otherwise we’d already be in the same social state as China, I don’t see any technical barrier to that. The question would be on wether we can preserve that going forward.

imtringued 4y ago

Good thing we don't already live in such a dystopia. I mean, banking is digital first and cash second. Also, programmable money already exists and is called food stamps in the USA.

no_time 4y ago
>Good thing we don't already live in such a dystopia. Only if you think in a binary exists/doesnt't exist way. With digital payments first and cash never, this could be taken much further.
starkd 4y ago
Food stamps are traded for cash all the time. You get less on the dollar, but people still do it in order to use it for other things.
- notch898a 4y ago
  Yeah this is why I hate food stamps. You can literally go to any hood, walk in front of the grocery store, and there is a burgeoning black market for the stamps (actually EBT card). They function as (discounted) cash for people who want them to be cash. Just give the cash to everyone instead of this ridiculous failed program with overhead to make sure it's just spent on food. Families actually spending it on food would have more money then because you could cut the overhead costs and pay it out to everyone.
int_19h 4y ago
Think of it like Android vs iOS. Android has the ability to sideload apps. The vast majority of users never even enable that, but when you need that escape hatch, it's there.

rich_sasha 4y ago

I don't like CBDCs but suspect in practice it wouldn't be very different to Visa/MasterCard duopoly. Mostly widely accepted except for some frankly quite random exceptions. You'd imagine legal protection of this should exist just the same as it exists for assets now. Eg if you get a speeding fine you are contesting (or something hing more nefarious, say you're a journalist reporting in corrupt government) the state can[not] just confiscate your property without a court decision. I was about to write "cannot" but then remembered Civil Forfeiture in the US. But my basic point is, I think most.l likely this wouldn't change things too much in practice. I still don't much like them.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> in practice it wouldn't be very different to Visa/MasterCard duopoly Now a monopoly controlled by the monetary authority, also for all payments:
humanizersequel 4y ago
>l likely this wouldn't change things too much in practice. You are significantly underestimating how much of the day-to-day economy happens in "under the table" cash transactions (doesn't even have to be cash, some unsophisticated casino-chip setup like Venmo or Cashapp works as well) that wouldn't stand up to the kind of scrutiny afforded by a CBDC system.
- rich_sasha 4y ago
  Hmm, well, true. I guess I don't have much sympathy for the kind of industries that couldn't stand up to scrutiny. There are also fairly benign cases of cash-in-hand industries like builders etc., dodging tax by taking cash payments of the book, good question how that would evolve. You hit the nail on the head there btw, it would lead to a shadow economy based on some other medium of exchange, perhaps crypto. Except... How do you buy your crypto in the first place? Surely not with CBDC..!
  - humanizersequel 4y ago

CTDOCodebases 4y ago

Soma. If you start consuming it soon enough it won't be a "totalitarian dystopia". It will be a utopia!

starkd 4y ago
Maybe that's why they allow the fentanyl in through the border.

blitzar 4y ago

> CBDCs devolve into a totalitarian dystopia with "programmed" money that can control the population down to the individual level? How is it that Central Bank crypto will lead to a totalitarian dystopia, while BitCoin, Eth, Dog Coin, FTX coin etc are libertarian projects that will save the world?

starkd 4y ago
CBDC's are not cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are decentralized and implemented by various foundations with open source protocols. CBDC's are planned and implemented by a central bank.
humanizersequel 4y ago
The "central" in "Central Bank" isn't just there for the lulz.

MzHN 4y ago

If implemented with, or similar to, GNU Taler[1] then privacy for consumers is preserved, which is already better than credit/debit cards currently [1] https://taler.net/en/faq.html https://taler.net/en/faq.html

ursuscamp 4y ago
Is this a chaumian mint? I have never heard of this project, it's pretty neat. There are a couple of chaumian mint systems in development in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Cashu: https://github.com/cashubtc/cashu https://github.com/cashubtc/cashu Fedminit: https://fedimint.org https://fedimint.org In Cashu, a mint is a single custodian, while Fedimint is designed around a multiple federated mints in a multisig. Both issue e-tokens signed with blind signatures. Both of them also integrate with the Lightning network, so users of the minted cash can make use of the rest of Bitcoin ecosystem for payments.

px43 4y ago

It seems to me that CBDCs cut out a lot of the friction that currently prevents people from moving towards more interesting and decentralized payment infrastructure. Any system backed by math seems to me to be strictly better than any system which is not backed by math. Legacy banking infrastructure is a dangerous mess, and needs to die. To me, the acceptance of CBDCs is an admission that the old ways are failing, and a crypto backed economy is the future. CBDCs will still need to compete with crypto assets already in existence, but at least now everything can speak the same language.

ambientenv 4y ago
"a lot of the friction" can be something that keeps us from sliding down a slippery slope into a quagmire beyond our control.
- px43 4y ago
  [dead]
starkd 4y ago
But the current legacy system is an evolved standard. A drop-in replacement is likely to introduce a lot of unintended consequences, however beautiful in theory it may seem.
- px43 4y ago
  There are actual, visible consequences to trying to keep the old dying system alive. It's hopelessly broken, and more important, unsustainable. For it to truly be a product of "evolution", you have to let the broken parts die.

nivenkos 4y ago

Trudeau already froze protesters' bank accounts, so I don't see much of a difference with the current system. I think the main benefits would be if we could get out of the VISA and Mastercard duopoly, and the requirement to settle trades in USD in the future.

phendrenad2 4y ago

I don't have optimism or enthusiasm for CBDC, but it seems like it's bo different from the system we have now. All transactions are already digital, tracked, reported, and can be intervened in by your government. So what changes? The money system of the world is a series of computer programs run at banks. CBDC would just be changing those systems to run... blockchain algorithms. It's actually quite pointless to apply blockchain to something thst is inherenty centralized (which is why I have no optimism for CBDCs, they're a waste of everyone's time).

Ekaros 4y ago

Up side is not to have to deal with payment processors, banks and so on, but single hopefully free or tax paid centralised system. And I don't see worries too much as most of the bad things can already be done, or simply legislated on existing institutions by governments. Nothing actually stops at least with digital money from these things being done.

Digit-Al 4y ago

I wouldn't necessarily call myself "enthusiastic" about CBDCs, but I can certainly give some reasons why I find this proposal to be "fairly reasonable". Firstly, they start off by saying that they don't think it's currently necessary and that they are just looking to the future. They then talk about the current state of affairs with more transactions being made digitally and more private entities offering some sort of online wallet. Most of these entities are not British in origin and they state that if the situation were to arise where a majority of the countries "cash" transactions were controlled by a foreign entity then this could constitute a security risk. Now, I am a very long way from being a flag waving nationalist but even I can see the sense in that. Secondly, their proposal look fairly reasonable to me. I may be misreading it horribly but as far as I can tell the BoE is proposing to be an anonymous transaction layer. The diagram specifically states that they will not have any personal information associated with the wallet. It looks like the BoE would just hold an anonymous wallet with a GUID and a value. The PIPs have your user details and GUID. When you make a payment from your wallet to some other wallet the PIP just sends a request to the BoE to transfer a sum from one GUID to another and the BoE never receives any information on the payer and payee. Because of this, it will be pretty difficult for the government to prevent any particular person making a payment, or to control how someone makes a payment. There are a huge number of private entities that will have the necessary status to get clearance to access the API, I am sure. Can you imagine the UK government trying to bully hundreds, maybe thousands of companies - some not based in the UK - into preventing payments to one person; and they would have to cover all entities because otherwise the person being targeted could just change wallet providers. It could still potentially turn bad, but it looks to my (admittedly not highly experienced eye) that the BoE is trying to design a system that is reasonably resilient to the type of tampering and control that many people fear.

khmii 4y ago

At least in the US, I just don't think this will ever work. It is ultimately only in the interest of the central bank. There are really no other participants that will be clamoring for this. I am pushing 50 and I just can't imagine I live to see the day I can't get cash from the bank when we still have absolutely worthless pennies in circulation. This is such a fundamental change to money and banking I just don't see it being widely adopted.