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If you're worried about "total bank surveillance" (which seems to be most people in this thread), don't. Every single bank you have an account with already has

If you're worried about "total bank surveillance" (which seems to be most people in this thread), don't. Every single bank you have an account with already has to keep track of know-your-customer information. It's not like the fact that there's a centralized digital currency will give the government more control over you than not. The government can simply tell the banks to hold your assets, put you on a list that prevents payments providers to service you, etc. The digital currency won't make any of that worse. The good thing about digital currencies is that'll actually take power away from commercial banks. Right now you need to go through someone like Barclays, HSBC, etc, to get your money. CBDC actually lets you keep your balance directly with the government ledger and avoid relying on banks for everything. This is a good thing. Beware that commercial banks are obviously opposed to this and will be very vocal about it.

deleted 4y ago
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ladon86 4y ago
Sort of like a bank, only better than a bank because, you know, banks always get knocked off. No-one knocks off Old Rishi.
gonzo41 4y ago
Let's not pretend for a second that people are actually looking for privacy whilst they walk around with iphones, with tiktok, facebook, money apps, location tracking fitness apps etc. Anyway, I think governments could regulate better to make payments more of a public infrastructure type deal. The banks will still make a stack of cash on all the other things they do.
- hcks 4y ago
  Why are people always pretending there is no difference between being tracked by Facebook, and by your government? Facebook’s goal is mostly to make money. Facebook will not put you in jail, or fine you. As bad as you think these companies are, they never committed war, crimes or genocides. There is a massive difference between being tracked by states (who have a monopoly on violence and terrible track records) and advertising firms.
  - starkd 4y ago
    I think the Twitter Files blew the lid off on the illusion that corporations are private in the sense they get no direction from the government. Matt Taibbi found the FBI to be deeply embedded in Twitter. Don't think they are not at Facebook as well.
    - realce 4y ago
      BLEW THE LID off of a practice that every single communications providers ever created in America since the FBI existed has done, you mean?
      - starkd 4y ago
        True. But not nearly to this scale and ease.
        blitzar 4y ago
        "The twitter files" while cherry picked to manipulate the narrative to attempt to show the opposite simply demonstrated that corporations reject the state requests as often as they oblige the state.
  - Devasta 4y ago
    Facebook is implicated in facilitating genocide in multiple countries.
  - gonzo41 4y ago
    Please read this. Facebook is starting to rack up it's own bodycount https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
- starkd 4y ago
  People are generally not worried about privacy until they have direct reason to be. Unfortunately, that is usually when it is too late.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> not like the fact that there's a centralized digital currency will give the government more control over you than not Of course it does. There is no central registry of who has accounts where and what they’re doing. Records are maintained at the edge. Modern banking is topologically decentralised. CBDC opens central bank money to the masses. (It isn’t a new idea [1][2].) It has advantages. One disadvantage is it ports over blockchain’s centralised record-keeping. Running a search on everyone who purchased from or donated to X between such and such dates changes from a record request to every bank, credit card company and P2P app that did business with X, a request process which takes time, may cross jurisdictions, tends to require X’s coöperation, and is lossy with some payment methods, into a database lookup. The quiet power grab is this being, with virtually zero debate, a central bank’s digital currency versus e.g. an independent public bank’s. [1] https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GDI_Central-Banking-For-All_201806.pdf https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GD... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-postal-banking-5217341 https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-postal-banking-5217341
Asooka 4y ago
Just because the government can easily do that doesn't mean it should have the power to trivially do it. There is some oversight right now, as opposed to zero oversight if the government directly owns your money.
hcks 4y ago
Taking the power away from decentralised / competing entities motivated by profit and giving it to a centralised government that has a track record of abusing individual freedoms and seeking more power is not a good thing
tgv 4y ago
In a likely implementation, it will centralize control over accounts and transactions. Anyone with access will be able to grab all financial data in a pinch. Rich people, and resourceful organisations, OTOH, will be able to circumvent it. So it is to be expected that e.g. terrorism investigations will center on normal citizens, just because it's easier to do. And any future authoritarian regime will of course not play by today's rules, and put the opposition under financial scrutiny within a day, and simply starve the people it doesn't like. I hate banks, but I think I like them better than this option.
- starkd 4y ago
  Exactly. We need to keep in mind what kind of regimes can (and likely will) arise in the future with the additional capabilities of a CBDC's.
  - CrazyPyroLinux 4y ago
    As if the ones we have now aren't suspect enough!
    - djfobbz 4y ago
      Facts!!!
- StanislavPetrov 4y ago
  >And any future authoritarian regime will of course not play by today's rules Or current authoritarian regimes. We have already seen protesters in Canada have their bank accounts frozen by edicts from the government without any sort of trial or legal process. Truly frightening to think what they would do in a cashless society (which is the ultimate goal of centralized digital currency) to coerce all sorts of desired "behavior".
  - m348e912 4y ago
    The Canadian government didn't just freeze bank accounts, they froze bitcoin addresses that the protesters used to receive donations from supporters. There is no reason for me to think that a CBDC wouldn't be used the same way.
gizmo 4y ago
The banks don't know how much money I have, because the different banks I use don't talk to each other. The bank knows I buy things from amazon, but they don't know what I buy. The government knows what I report in taxes, but little else. Shops I purchase from know that I have paid, but they don't know my name or my bank account #. Every party knows something about me, but nobody knows enough for me to be worried. The current system is pretty good at protecting my privacy, especially given how primitive it all is.
- rdevsrex 4y ago
  Maybe the banks don't tell competing banks how much you have, but since the Patriot Act, I wouldn't count on the government not knowing if they want to know.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    Patriot Act was discontinued in 2020.
    - from 4y ago
      Provisions of the Patriot Act allow banks to share customer information with each other for “compliance reasons.” The government is increasingly encouraging this. What this will mean in practice 30 years from now is that one account closure will mean that you’ll never get a bank account again.
- neilwilson 4y ago
  The Bank of an England does as it requires reports from each of the banks in the Sterling Framework. Anti money laundering regulations allow the authorities to gather a full picture if they need to. Including any accountants or financial or legal professionals you interact with - all of whom are required by law to report any activity they consider suspicious.
ElectricalUnion 4y ago
As an addendum the commercial banks have a profit incetive in form of future uses of said know-your-customer information (overdrafts, financing, mortgages...) even if actually "just managing your money around" is net unprofitable, as it usually is. I don't see how having the govt foot the unprofitable part of the whole thing for no clear benefit for them (govt already know everything, kinda) will help the financial system at all.
- starkd 4y ago
  I think one plan is to have CBDC accounts direct with the federal reserve. These accounts would be convenient with the added cost of a lower interest rate than regular accounts. So, regular banks could still compete. They call this the risk of "disintermediation". There is literature at the Federal Reserve website that discusses this. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/the-macroeconomic-implications-of-cbdc-a-review-of-the-literature.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/the-macroeconomi...
starkd 4y ago
CBDC's introduce an additional capability in that it is effectively programmable money. Imagine some money only being able to be used for certain things, no anonymous third party transactions, automatic shut off certain accounts. This is a new area. Existing accounts can do this to some extent, but it is still decentralized to some extent. But I agree the only way to avoid surveillance is tthe use of cash.
- Fervicus 4y ago
  This is the start of them eventually making cash obsolete. Full control.
yootyootr 4y ago
I'm not worried about total bank surveillance at all, actually. I'm extremely worried about: * money that is programmed to be returned to the bank unless it is spent by X time * money that is programmed to only be spent on certain goods or services * high barriers to entry for businesses who want to allow money to be spent with them * unaccountable/summary de-monetisation of persons and businesses on the whim of a government * universal credit/benefits being issued as CBDC instead of fiat currency, creating a two-tier society where only the rich get access to fiat * money that can have its spending and issuing rules changed quickly and easily by the current government of the day
- pjc50 4y ago
  > money that is programmed to only be spent on certain goods or services The US food stamp system does this. > unaccountable/summary de-monetisation of persons and businesses on the whim of a government The US police seizure system does this; I submit that if this happens you have a serious rule-of-law problem and already, or are about to, have bigger problems. > universal credit/benefits being issued as CBDC instead of fiat currency, creating a two-tier society where only the rich get access to fiat This implies nonconvertibility?
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    Nonconvertibility is a forseeable next step. I imagine first there would be a fee for converting to cash (eg. if you "withdraw" 100 digital pounds, you get 90 paper ones). Then the decreasing popularity of paper pounds would be used as a basis for eliminating them entirely: going forward, paper pounds could be deposited for digital, but not withdrawn. Next, the bank starts applying negative interest rates when they need to "stimulate" asset prices and keep the stock market from crashing. No longer worried that people will pull cash out of their account to stuff under a mattress, your bank account starts dropping by 5% or 10% per year...
    - bsdz 4y ago
      > Next, the bank starts applying negative interest rates when they need to "stimulate" asset prices and keep the stock market from crashing. No longer worried that people will pull cash out of their account to stuff under a mattress, your bank account starts dropping by 5% or 10% per year... Can't they do this already by increasing money supply or QE? Central bank's can already create inflation which isn't dissimilar to negative interest rates.
I_am_tiberius 4y ago
I think you're totally missing the point. With CBDCs the state will be solely able to control who has access to the monetary system and you're not able to escape without physical notes. There is also so much potential for misuse (e.g. social credit system). CBDCs are in my opinion, one big step towards dystopia.
pibechorro 4y ago
As much as I think the big banks are scum, I prefer having them than depending exclusively on one central vector. You can choose your bank. Competition is a good thing. Money needs to be as far from politics as possible, a central digital coin is the opposite.
CTDOCodebases 4y ago
It's not so much the privacy aspect. There are laws in existance to protect free speech (to some degree). There are no laws in existance to protect access to currency and if it is successful there will be no way to exercise resistance should government cease to be answerable to the people.
AbrahamParangi 4y ago
"The digital currency won't make any of that worse." I understand the argument but I suspect in practice you will be less susceptible to the predations of your bank and substantially more susceptible to the predations of your government. At which point you should ask yourself, is it easier for me to change my bank or my government?
- jwestbury 4y ago
  Well, I've found it easier to move countries than to move banks, personally.
  - Fervicus 4y ago
    I predict people will soon run out of countries to move to. This will be implemented everywhere eventually, sadly.
vladoski 4y ago
To be fair I don't like the commercial banking system but having all the banking system centralised like that is so much worse. At least the commercial bank system is in some way decentralised. Also CDBCs are programmable, Programmable money is a dangerous tool in my opinion. The State could thoroughly control everything you could do with money (e.g. carbon allowances, money that expires etc.), money would literally become vouchers controlled by the government. Pure dystopia.
upsidesinclude 4y ago
Daft
nsxwolf 4y ago
Maybe commercial banks have too much power, but once I do get my cash out of the bank and into my hands I can do whatever I want with it. The government can't suddenly tell me "We saw what you did - your money is no good here".
prottog 4y ago
> The good thing about digital currencies is that'll actually take power away from commercial banks. Right now you need to go through someone like Barclays, HSBC, etc, to get your money. CBDC actually lets you keep your balance directly with the government ledger and avoid relying on banks for everything. This is a good thing. "This is a good thing" is a very strange conclusion. Yes, let's shrink the private economy and make people deal directly with the government for the most basic unit of commerce, money. I can't possibly see how this could go wrong.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  Your argument relies on two strong assumption, "everything private economy is good", and "everything government is bad". Unless you add strong reasoning behind it such blanket arguments I default to scepticism.
  - jazzyk 4y ago
    No, it is really "competition" (banks compete for my money) vs "monopoly" (no other option than the government). The assumption that CBDC is a good idea because the government is always benevolent and does what's best for the people is incorrect, as demonstrated by the horrible financial mismanagement in the recent 20 years.
  - mitthrowaway2 4y ago
    I'm very strongly opposed to CBDCs, but they could certainly be a good thing with a good and trustworthy government. However they also open up a hugely tempting, dangerous, and damaging failure mode which would rapidly overwhelm all the positives. My concern is, how many successive good, responsible governments can we expect before one of them goes bad? And how much does the existence of this failure mode increase the chance that one of them will be tempted to reach for it? I'm sure it will not fail right away, and there will be a sustained period of benefit. But I don't think it's worth the longer-term risk.
    - prottog 4y ago
KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago
It shortcuts due process and the judicial process. Bankers are incentivized to defend their customers if they are sufficiently large. Now the entire financial system is under direct control of the state.
bojangleslover 4y ago
That's nonsense. Different banks don't have direct access to one another. HMRC/IRS don't even have direct access to your bank. Anyone who has ever tried reconciling separate accounts knows how hard it is. To have it all in one account, and therefore queryable from one single API, is an absolute step function in the direction of surveillance. Just think about how taboo it is to ask someone how much they make/have, and think about why it's taboo. Financial information is some of the most private information there is. Before you know it, with all of it under one API (or in one account), Equifax will release a product gatekeeping access to this API to "verify" income or assets, but in a far more powerful way than they already do.
- lottin 4y ago
  CBDCs are intended to be used like pocket change, as far as I know. People will continue to use banking and payment services, so I doubt that it will all end up in one account.
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
>It's not like the fact that there's a centralized digital currency will give the government more control over you than not. This is completely wrong. Centralized, programmable digital currency gives the government complete control over how, when and where you are allowed to spend your own money. Its implementation would be the most dystopian possible development.
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nimbius 4y ago
I think the timing of this release is highly suspect and the real reason is a lot simpler. The magnanimously negative impact of Brexit on the kingdom coupled with recent outlandishly irresponsible neoliberal monetary policy have put the UK in a precarious situation where member nations are unironically reconsidering membership. Scotland last november gave it serious consideration, and in 2021 Wales seemed poised to give it a go as well. the alternative these states are electing is the EU and if such a choice were to be made it would surely spell disaster for England. Brexit has also created an unnecessary burden on corporations with a euro presence in that all must now be renegotiated at significant expense. The easiest path is to simply tell this relatively small kingdom of 67 million to trade only in euros, and this in turn would further devalue the pound sterling. the "Digital Sterling" serves a twofold purpose: to distract from the slow rolling catastrophe of Brexit and other hardline neoliberal policies by offering something that appears to be progress, and as a desperate effort to court business and commerce back to the kingdom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit#Impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit#Impact
- raylad 4y ago
  magnanimously is probably not the word you intended: magnanimous (adjective) 1. Highly moral, especially in showing kindness or forgiveness, as in overlooking insults or not seeking revenge. 2. Great of mind, elevated in soul or in sentiment, raised above what is low, mean, or ungenerous of lofty and courageous spirit. 3. Dictated by or exhibiting nobleness of soul; honorable; noble; not selfish. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.)
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    I doubt there is a different definition there, but perhaps checking a British Dictionary about a British event would be a good idea. Also, I think they were using it sarcastically.
amelius 4y ago
The people worried about surveillance use cash ...
Lordarminius 4y ago
You don't understand anything about the power of digital currencies. Every one of your points shows this.
godelski 4y ago
> Every single bank you have an account with already has to keep track of know-your-customer information. It's not like the fact that there's a centralized digital currency will give the government more control over you than not. This isn't quite true. Most concern is about how mundane transactions are tracked. Things like how your grandma giving you $5 could now be tracked. Obviously this won't be an issue if physical cash still exists, but it would if that was eliminated. The other aspect of a digital currency is that it allows for much finer detailed tracking. High precision. This is still useful in our ever increasingly surveilled world. I don't know how the UK works, but in the US banks don't need to report when the inflow/outflow is <$10k. Meaning that for most people Venmo could choose not to report to the IRS for them (no idea if they do or not, but if they do, another business model could not) because their annual transactions don't exceed $10k. So even digitally, your small standard transactions aren't (necessarily) being tracked. This could even include things like tips for servers. Of course, the Fed has recently been pushing for this threshold to come down to $600[0] with an explanation that this targets the rich who have multiple bank accounts that are amassing millions of untaxed income. I am actually for digital currencies, but I personally think we need to make them like digital cash. That is, they use ZKP transactions with minimal metadata to produce as anonymous transactions as possible. Surveillance capitalism and surveillance states have been a mistake. We had centuries of tracking commerce with physical cash and have learned a lot about how to catch fraud and theft. While anonymous payments can enable some more theft I don't personally believe that any government needs to specifically track what an individual person is spending their money on.As a data nerd, I'd be perfectly fine if we had some homomorphic encryption that allowed for some anonymized analysis on how aggregates of people are spending their money but I still don't think we should be tracking citizens. [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-bank-account-update-change-treasury-10000-dollars/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-bank-account-update-change-...
amadeuspagel 4y ago
> CBDC actually lets you keep your balance directly with the government ledger and avoid relying on banks for everything. Why is a CBDC necessary for that?
bubersson 4y ago
CBDCs are obviously evil, but I really wonder how come people don't fight more against KYC? KYC policies are truly exclusionary, they exclude literally millions of families from being able to transfer money or interact with whatever "KYC'd" services. And guess who's the most affected? How come all "inclusivity above all" folks never talk about KYC policies? Also KYC is definitely not bothering people that are actually laundering the largest volumes of money. See https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/industry/financial%20services https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/industry/financia...

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[deleted]

ladon86 4y ago

Sort of like a bank, only better than a bank because, you know, banks always get knocked off. No-one knocks off Old Rishi.

gonzo41 4y ago

Let's not pretend for a second that people are actually looking for privacy whilst they walk around with iphones, with tiktok, facebook, money apps, location tracking fitness apps etc. Anyway, I think governments could regulate better to make payments more of a public infrastructure type deal. The banks will still make a stack of cash on all the other things they do.

hcks 4y ago
Why are people always pretending there is no difference between being tracked by Facebook, and by your government? Facebook’s goal is mostly to make money. Facebook will not put you in jail, or fine you. As bad as you think these companies are, they never committed war, crimes or genocides. There is a massive difference between being tracked by states (who have a monopoly on violence and terrible track records) and advertising firms.
- starkd 4y ago
  I think the Twitter Files blew the lid off on the illusion that corporations are private in the sense they get no direction from the government. Matt Taibbi found the FBI to be deeply embedded in Twitter. Don't think they are not at Facebook as well.
  - realce 4y ago
    BLEW THE LID off of a practice that every single communications providers ever created in America since the FBI existed has done, you mean?
    - starkd 4y ago
      True. But not nearly to this scale and ease.
      - blitzar 4y ago
        "The twitter files" while cherry picked to manipulate the narrative to attempt to show the opposite simply demonstrated that corporations reject the state requests as often as they oblige the state.
- Devasta 4y ago
  Facebook is implicated in facilitating genocide in multiple countries.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  Please read this. Facebook is starting to rack up it's own bodycount https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-faceb...
starkd 4y ago
People are generally not worried about privacy until they have direct reason to be. Unfortunately, that is usually when it is too late.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> not like the fact that there's a centralized digital currency will give the government more control over you than not Of course it does. There is no central registry of who has accounts where and what they’re doing. Records are maintained at the edge. Modern banking is topologically decentralised. CBDC opens central bank money to the masses. (It isn’t a new idea [1][2].) It has advantages. One disadvantage is it ports over blockchain’s centralised record-keeping. Running a search on everyone who purchased from or donated to X between such and such dates changes from a record request to every bank, credit card company and P2P app that did business with X, a request process which takes time, may cross jurisdictions, tends to require X’s coöperation, and is lossy with some payment methods, into a database lookup. The quiet power grab is this being, with virtually zero debate, a central bank’s digital currency versus e.g. an independent public bank’s. [1] https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GDI_Central-Banking-For-All_201806.pdf https://rooseveltinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/GD... [2] https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-postal-banking-5217341 https://www.investopedia.com/what-is-postal-banking-5217341

Asooka 4y ago

Just because the government can easily do that doesn't mean it should have the power to trivially do it. There is some oversight right now, as opposed to zero oversight if the government directly owns your money.

hcks 4y ago

Taking the power away from decentralised / competing entities motivated by profit and giving it to a centralised government that has a track record of abusing individual freedoms and seeking more power is not a good thing

tgv 4y ago

In a likely implementation, it will centralize control over accounts and transactions. Anyone with access will be able to grab all financial data in a pinch. Rich people, and resourceful organisations, OTOH, will be able to circumvent it. So it is to be expected that e.g. terrorism investigations will center on normal citizens, just because it's easier to do. And any future authoritarian regime will of course not play by today's rules, and put the opposition under financial scrutiny within a day, and simply starve the people it doesn't like. I hate banks, but I think I like them better than this option.

starkd 4y ago
Exactly. We need to keep in mind what kind of regimes can (and likely will) arise in the future with the additional capabilities of a CBDC's.
- CrazyPyroLinux 4y ago
  As if the ones we have now aren't suspect enough!
  - djfobbz 4y ago
    Facts!!!
StanislavPetrov 4y ago
>And any future authoritarian regime will of course not play by today's rules Or current authoritarian regimes. We have already seen protesters in Canada have their bank accounts frozen by edicts from the government without any sort of trial or legal process. Truly frightening to think what they would do in a cashless society (which is the ultimate goal of centralized digital currency) to coerce all sorts of desired "behavior".
- m348e912 4y ago
  The Canadian government didn't just freeze bank accounts, they froze bitcoin addresses that the protesters used to receive donations from supporters. There is no reason for me to think that a CBDC wouldn't be used the same way.

gizmo 4y ago

The banks don't know how much money I have, because the different banks I use don't talk to each other. The bank knows I buy things from amazon, but they don't know what I buy. The government knows what I report in taxes, but little else. Shops I purchase from know that I have paid, but they don't know my name or my bank account #. Every party knows something about me, but nobody knows enough for me to be worried. The current system is pretty good at protecting my privacy, especially given how primitive it all is.

rdevsrex 4y ago
Maybe the banks don't tell competing banks how much you have, but since the Patriot Act, I wouldn't count on the government not knowing if they want to know.
- flangola7 4y ago
  Patriot Act was discontinued in 2020.
  - from 4y ago
    Provisions of the Patriot Act allow banks to share customer information with each other for “compliance reasons.” The government is increasingly encouraging this. What this will mean in practice 30 years from now is that one account closure will mean that you’ll never get a bank account again.
neilwilson 4y ago
The Bank of an England does as it requires reports from each of the banks in the Sterling Framework. Anti money laundering regulations allow the authorities to gather a full picture if they need to. Including any accountants or financial or legal professionals you interact with - all of whom are required by law to report any activity they consider suspicious.

ElectricalUnion 4y ago

As an addendum the commercial banks have a profit incetive in form of future uses of said know-your-customer information (overdrafts, financing, mortgages...) even if actually "just managing your money around" is net unprofitable, as it usually is. I don't see how having the govt foot the unprofitable part of the whole thing for no clear benefit for them (govt already know everything, kinda) will help the financial system at all.

starkd 4y ago
I think one plan is to have CBDC accounts direct with the federal reserve. These accounts would be convenient with the added cost of a lower interest rate than regular accounts. So, regular banks could still compete. They call this the risk of "disintermediation". There is literature at the Federal Reserve website that discusses this. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/the-macroeconomic-implications-of-cbdc-a-review-of-the-literature.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/feds/the-macroeconomi...

starkd 4y ago

CBDC's introduce an additional capability in that it is effectively programmable money. Imagine some money only being able to be used for certain things, no anonymous third party transactions, automatic shut off certain accounts. This is a new area. Existing accounts can do this to some extent, but it is still decentralized to some extent. But I agree the only way to avoid surveillance is tthe use of cash.

Fervicus 4y ago
This is the start of them eventually making cash obsolete. Full control.

yootyootr 4y ago

I'm not worried about total bank surveillance at all, actually. I'm extremely worried about: * money that is programmed to be returned to the bank unless it is spent by X time * money that is programmed to only be spent on certain goods or services * high barriers to entry for businesses who want to allow money to be spent with them * unaccountable/summary de-monetisation of persons and businesses on the whim of a government * universal credit/benefits being issued as CBDC instead of fiat currency, creating a two-tier society where only the rich get access to fiat * money that can have its spending and issuing rules changed quickly and easily by the current government of the day

pjc50 4y ago
> money that is programmed to only be spent on certain goods or services The US food stamp system does this. > unaccountable/summary de-monetisation of persons and businesses on the whim of a government The US police seizure system does this; I submit that if this happens you have a serious rule-of-law problem and already, or are about to, have bigger problems. > universal credit/benefits being issued as CBDC instead of fiat currency, creating a two-tier society where only the rich get access to fiat This implies nonconvertibility?
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  Nonconvertibility is a forseeable next step. I imagine first there would be a fee for converting to cash (eg. if you "withdraw" 100 digital pounds, you get 90 paper ones). Then the decreasing popularity of paper pounds would be used as a basis for eliminating them entirely: going forward, paper pounds could be deposited for digital, but not withdrawn. Next, the bank starts applying negative interest rates when they need to "stimulate" asset prices and keep the stock market from crashing. No longer worried that people will pull cash out of their account to stuff under a mattress, your bank account starts dropping by 5% or 10% per year...
  - bsdz 4y ago
    > Next, the bank starts applying negative interest rates when they need to "stimulate" asset prices and keep the stock market from crashing. No longer worried that people will pull cash out of their account to stuff under a mattress, your bank account starts dropping by 5% or 10% per year... Can't they do this already by increasing money supply or QE? Central bank's can already create inflation which isn't dissimilar to negative interest rates.

I_am_tiberius 4y ago

I think you're totally missing the point. With CBDCs the state will be solely able to control who has access to the monetary system and you're not able to escape without physical notes. There is also so much potential for misuse (e.g. social credit system). CBDCs are in my opinion, one big step towards dystopia.

pibechorro 4y ago

As much as I think the big banks are scum, I prefer having them than depending exclusively on one central vector. You can choose your bank. Competition is a good thing. Money needs to be as far from politics as possible, a central digital coin is the opposite.

CTDOCodebases 4y ago

It's not so much the privacy aspect. There are laws in existance to protect free speech (to some degree). There are no laws in existance to protect access to currency and if it is successful there will be no way to exercise resistance should government cease to be answerable to the people.

AbrahamParangi 4y ago

"The digital currency won't make any of that worse." I understand the argument but I suspect in practice you will be less susceptible to the predations of your bank and substantially more susceptible to the predations of your government. At which point you should ask yourself, is it easier for me to change my bank or my government?

jwestbury 4y ago
Well, I've found it easier to move countries than to move banks, personally.
- Fervicus 4y ago
  I predict people will soon run out of countries to move to. This will be implemented everywhere eventually, sadly.

vladoski 4y ago

To be fair I don't like the commercial banking system but having all the banking system centralised like that is so much worse. At least the commercial bank system is in some way decentralised. Also CDBCs are programmable, Programmable money is a dangerous tool in my opinion. The State could thoroughly control everything you could do with money (e.g. carbon allowances, money that expires etc.), money would literally become vouchers controlled by the government. Pure dystopia.

upsidesinclude 4y ago

Daft

nsxwolf 4y ago

Maybe commercial banks have too much power, but once I do get my cash out of the bank and into my hands I can do whatever I want with it. The government can't suddenly tell me "We saw what you did - your money is no good here".

prottog 4y ago

> The good thing about digital currencies is that'll actually take power away from commercial banks. Right now you need to go through someone like Barclays, HSBC, etc, to get your money. CBDC actually lets you keep your balance directly with the government ledger and avoid relying on banks for everything. This is a good thing. "This is a good thing" is a very strange conclusion. Yes, let's shrink the private economy and make people deal directly with the government for the most basic unit of commerce, money. I can't possibly see how this could go wrong.

polygamous_bat 4y ago
Your argument relies on two strong assumption, "everything private economy is good", and "everything government is bad". Unless you add strong reasoning behind it such blanket arguments I default to scepticism.
- jazzyk 4y ago
  No, it is really "competition" (banks compete for my money) vs "monopoly" (no other option than the government). The assumption that CBDC is a good idea because the government is always benevolent and does what's best for the people is incorrect, as demonstrated by the horrible financial mismanagement in the recent 20 years.
- mitthrowaway2 4y ago
  I'm very strongly opposed to CBDCs, but they could certainly be a good thing with a good and trustworthy government. However they also open up a hugely tempting, dangerous, and damaging failure mode which would rapidly overwhelm all the positives. My concern is, how many successive good, responsible governments can we expect before one of them goes bad? And how much does the existence of this failure mode increase the chance that one of them will be tempted to reach for it? I'm sure it will not fail right away, and there will be a sustained period of benefit. But I don't think it's worth the longer-term risk.
  - prottog 4y ago

KRAKRISMOTT 4y ago

It shortcuts due process and the judicial process. Bankers are incentivized to defend their customers if they are sufficiently large. Now the entire financial system is under direct control of the state.

bojangleslover 4y ago

That's nonsense. Different banks don't have direct access to one another. HMRC/IRS don't even have direct access to your bank. Anyone who has ever tried reconciling separate accounts knows how hard it is. To have it all in one account, and therefore queryable from one single API, is an absolute step function in the direction of surveillance. Just think about how taboo it is to ask someone how much they make/have, and think about why it's taboo. Financial information is some of the most private information there is. Before you know it, with all of it under one API (or in one account), Equifax will release a product gatekeeping access to this API to "verify" income or assets, but in a far more powerful way than they already do.

lottin 4y ago
CBDCs are intended to be used like pocket change, as far as I know. People will continue to use banking and payment services, so I doubt that it will all end up in one account.

StanislavPetrov 4y ago

>It's not like the fact that there's a centralized digital currency will give the government more control over you than not. This is completely wrong. Centralized, programmable digital currency gives the government complete control over how, when and where you are allowed to spend your own money. Its implementation would be the most dystopian possible development.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

nimbius 4y ago

I think the timing of this release is highly suspect and the real reason is a lot simpler. The magnanimously negative impact of Brexit on the kingdom coupled with recent outlandishly irresponsible neoliberal monetary policy have put the UK in a precarious situation where member nations are unironically reconsidering membership. Scotland last november gave it serious consideration, and in 2021 Wales seemed poised to give it a go as well. the alternative these states are electing is the EU and if such a choice were to be made it would surely spell disaster for England. Brexit has also created an unnecessary burden on corporations with a euro presence in that all must now be renegotiated at significant expense. The easiest path is to simply tell this relatively small kingdom of 67 million to trade only in euros, and this in turn would further devalue the pound sterling. the "Digital Sterling" serves a twofold purpose: to distract from the slow rolling catastrophe of Brexit and other hardline neoliberal policies by offering something that appears to be progress, and as a desperate effort to court business and commerce back to the kingdom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit#Impact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brexit#Impact

raylad 4y ago
magnanimously is probably not the word you intended: magnanimous (adjective) 1. Highly moral, especially in showing kindness or forgiveness, as in overlooking insults or not seeking revenge. 2. Great of mind, elevated in soul or in sentiment, raised above what is low, mean, or ungenerous of lofty and courageous spirit. 3. Dictated by or exhibiting nobleness of soul; honorable; noble; not selfish. (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.)
- withinboredom 4y ago
  I doubt there is a different definition there, but perhaps checking a British Dictionary about a British event would be a good idea. Also, I think they were using it sarcastically.

amelius 4y ago

The people worried about surveillance use cash ...

Lordarminius 4y ago

You don't understand anything about the power of digital currencies. Every one of your points shows this.

godelski 4y ago

> Every single bank you have an account with already has to keep track of know-your-customer information. It's not like the fact that there's a centralized digital currency will give the government more control over you than not. This isn't quite true. Most concern is about how mundane transactions are tracked. Things like how your grandma giving you $5 could now be tracked. Obviously this won't be an issue if physical cash still exists, but it would if that was eliminated. The other aspect of a digital currency is that it allows for much finer detailed tracking. High precision. This is still useful in our ever increasingly surveilled world. I don't know how the UK works, but in the US banks don't need to report when the inflow/outflow is <$10k. Meaning that for most people Venmo could choose not to report to the IRS for them (no idea if they do or not, but if they do, another business model could not) because their annual transactions don't exceed $10k. So even digitally, your small standard transactions aren't (necessarily) being tracked. This could even include things like tips for servers. Of course, the Fed has recently been pushing for this threshold to come down to $600[0] with an explanation that this targets the rich who have multiple bank accounts that are amassing millions of untaxed income. I am actually for digital currencies, but I personally think we need to make them like digital cash. That is, they use ZKP transactions with minimal metadata to produce as anonymous transactions as possible. Surveillance capitalism and surveillance states have been a mistake. We had centuries of tracking commerce with physical cash and have learned a lot about how to catch fraud and theft. While anonymous payments can enable some more theft I don't personally believe that any government needs to specifically track what an individual person is spending their money on.As a data nerd, I'd be perfectly fine if we had some homomorphic encryption that allowed for some anonymized analysis on how aggregates of people are spending their money but I still don't think we should be tracking citizens. [0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-bank-account-update-change-treasury-10000-dollars/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-bank-account-update-change-...

amadeuspagel 4y ago

> CBDC actually lets you keep your balance directly with the government ledger and avoid relying on banks for everything. Why is a CBDC necessary for that?

bubersson 4y ago

CBDCs are obviously evil, but I really wonder how come people don't fight more against KYC? KYC policies are truly exclusionary, they exclude literally millions of families from being able to transfer money or interact with whatever "KYC'd" services. And guess who's the most affected? How come all "inclusivity above all" folks never talk about KYC policies? Also KYC is definitely not bothering people that are actually laundering the largest volumes of money. See https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/industry/financial%20services https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/industry/financia...