4 ms·

The IMF is slowly pushing for digital currencies to replace cash

35 points by janandonly 3y ago

janandonly 3y ago
More than half the countries on earth are supposedly looking into this option. Source: https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/063/2023/011/article-A001-en.xml https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/063/2023/011/arti...
- macintux 3y ago
  They would be irresponsible not to investigate the possibility and likely outcomes (and I’m not vaguely interested in using digital currency, much less a proponent).
wait_a_minute 3y ago
Privacy nightmare and authoritarian nightmare. Stick with cash options. Cash as legal tender needs to be a law everywhere.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Same thing going on with public transit replacing tickets/passes with credit card scanner entry
  - lapinot 3y ago
    This! This is so infuriating. Now i guess most major city have some poorly secured db that contains all the time/place points where every user of mass transit has checked in/out. I'm not exactly sure what is the strong push for this, is it lobbying by vendors to get access to this data? In any case most of the time it's marketed as somehow "green" (because you understand, replacing paper with microelectronics is really the way to go).
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      It's govt surveillance tech. Now riders are more accurately and easily traced to individual citizens/residents/visitors.
- eastbound 3y ago
  There are only 20bn Euro banknotes. Fits snuggly in a Postgres database. Most of the times, they go straight from the ATM to the consumer to the baker to the bank in one day. Any other loop is (correction: can be) traced and reported. You don’t have privacy with banknotes. Try coins.
  - svara 3y ago
    How can you trace a loop unless it involves someone reading and reporting the serial number? Do you have some more information to read about how paper money flows are traced?
    - eastbound 3y ago
      That’s true, I made a claim I shouldn’t have, I have no proof that banks report serial numbers to any central entity. I should have rather claimed that it is theoretically feasible.
treyd 3y ago
The title is misleading. The IMF has an interest in being able to ensure digital payments are actually delivered to the parties they're supposed to since a big problem with foreign aid is cash payments being taken by force by local warlords or corrupt politicans. Nobody is seriously considering banning cash since a huge portion of the real economy is so strongly dependent on it and there's no real alternative for it. You can and should criticize the IMF for their neoliberalist economic policies that open the gates for foreign extractive businesses, but that's a policy discussion and not a technological one. If the goal was surveillance and authoritarianism then you can do that just as well with existing payment infrastructure that doesn't use cryptography as extensively as a proposed CBDC would.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  > Nobody is seriously considering banning cash It's mentioned frequently in research papers posted by central banks, as a way to effectively allow interest rates to drop below zero. Otherwise, this would incentivize people to stuff cash under their mattresses.
  - jlund-molfese 3y ago
    Yeah, but there are no serious proposals to ban cash that have any chance of actually happening within our lifetimes. People write research papers about all sorts of things. Omnipresent AI video surveillance of every square inch on Earth would probably have some benefits, but it’s politically unpalatable anywhere outside of a few countries.
    - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
      The central banks are the ones tasked with implementing the CBDC, of course. I think it's fair to say they've "seriously considered it" given that they have analyzed it in depth as part of their own monetary policy research. It is not likely to happen as part of an initial introduction of CBDCs. Whether it ever gets implemented is up to policymakers.
mjburgess 3y ago
fyi, central bank digital currencies are generally proposed as an anonymous system of digitally-native currency that means you would not have to use a bank/paypal/etc. to conduct transactions online it's a way of central banks taking back control of the currency system from mastercard/paypal/yourbank/etc. there should be no reason we need banks to conduct basic tasks which are increasingly digital only. irrc, proposals do not include any mechanism to reliably associated transactions over time with an individual's identity. if implemented it would increase privacy, as it would deprive banks/online middlement/etc. from having your transaction hisotry which is usually trivially accessible by law enforcement anyway
- verisimi 3y ago
  I guess that means they won't track you then! Lol
- wwwtyro 3y ago
  I'd be worried they'd wait until the population was reliant upon it, and then flip a switch disabling privacy. Seems risky.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    'they' are the population -- you can read BoE proposals on digital currency in the open; and likewise, the legal framework will be public the 'they' who flip switches are more company boards, rather than public democratic institutions of western liberal states for them to implement anything other than published papers on the system, it would require a conspiracy -- one unjustified given how trivial it is to monitor people anyway
- tjpnz 3y ago
  >it's a way of central banks taking back control of the currency system from mastercard/paypal/yourbank/etc. The middlemen are going to fight this to the very end, even if they have to resort to dirty tactics. It's no wonder that so much misinformation has cropped up on these in the last few years.
- kolanos 3y ago
alexb_ 3y ago
Why did you post this with such an editorialized title?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
politelemon 3y ago
Flagged for misleading title. Also is anyone having trouble scrolling the page on mobile? It seems to want to jump everywhere except the place I want it to.
- janandonly 3y ago
  Would you have read the article if HN had shown the original title: The Digital Finance Voyage: A Case for Public Sector Involvement Keynote address, Singapore Fintech Festival ?
  - dang 3y ago
    It's against HN's rules to do that - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: ""Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."". If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... I know it sounds like an arbitrary rule, and I agree that it has some disadvantages, but if we didn't have it, HN would be quite a different place. Titles are by far the biggest influence on threads. Allowing the submitter to put their own point of view in the title would give them special control over the discussion. We want the starting point of discussions here to be more neutral than that.

35 points by janandonly 3y ago

More than half the countries on earth are supposedly looking into this option. Source: https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/063/2023/011/article-A001-en.xml https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/063/2023/011/arti...

macintux 3y ago
They would be irresponsible not to investigate the possibility and likely outcomes (and I’m not vaguely interested in using digital currency, much less a proponent).

wait_a_minute 3y ago

Privacy nightmare and authoritarian nightmare. Stick with cash options. Cash as legal tender needs to be a law everywhere.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
Same thing going on with public transit replacing tickets/passes with credit card scanner entry
- lapinot 3y ago
  This! This is so infuriating. Now i guess most major city have some poorly secured db that contains all the time/place points where every user of mass transit has checked in/out. I'm not exactly sure what is the strong push for this, is it lobbying by vendors to get access to this data? In any case most of the time it's marketed as somehow "green" (because you understand, replacing paper with microelectronics is really the way to go).
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    It's govt surveillance tech. Now riders are more accurately and easily traced to individual citizens/residents/visitors.
eastbound 3y ago
There are only 20bn Euro banknotes. Fits snuggly in a Postgres database. Most of the times, they go straight from the ATM to the consumer to the baker to the bank in one day. Any other loop is (correction: can be) traced and reported. You don’t have privacy with banknotes. Try coins.
- svara 3y ago
  How can you trace a loop unless it involves someone reading and reporting the serial number? Do you have some more information to read about how paper money flows are traced?
  - eastbound 3y ago
    That’s true, I made a claim I shouldn’t have, I have no proof that banks report serial numbers to any central entity. I should have rather claimed that it is theoretically feasible.

treyd 3y ago

The title is misleading. The IMF has an interest in being able to ensure digital payments are actually delivered to the parties they're supposed to since a big problem with foreign aid is cash payments being taken by force by local warlords or corrupt politicans. Nobody is seriously considering banning cash since a huge portion of the real economy is so strongly dependent on it and there's no real alternative for it. You can and should criticize the IMF for their neoliberalist economic policies that open the gates for foreign extractive businesses, but that's a policy discussion and not a technological one. If the goal was surveillance and authoritarianism then you can do that just as well with existing payment infrastructure that doesn't use cryptography as extensively as a proposed CBDC would.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
> Nobody is seriously considering banning cash It's mentioned frequently in research papers posted by central banks, as a way to effectively allow interest rates to drop below zero. Otherwise, this would incentivize people to stuff cash under their mattresses.
- jlund-molfese 3y ago
  Yeah, but there are no serious proposals to ban cash that have any chance of actually happening within our lifetimes. People write research papers about all sorts of things. Omnipresent AI video surveillance of every square inch on Earth would probably have some benefits, but it’s politically unpalatable anywhere outside of a few countries.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    The central banks are the ones tasked with implementing the CBDC, of course. I think it's fair to say they've "seriously considered it" given that they have analyzed it in depth as part of their own monetary policy research. It is not likely to happen as part of an initial introduction of CBDCs. Whether it ever gets implemented is up to policymakers.

mjburgess 3y ago

fyi, central bank digital currencies are generally proposed as an anonymous system of digitally-native currency that means you would not have to use a bank/paypal/etc. to conduct transactions online it's a way of central banks taking back control of the currency system from mastercard/paypal/yourbank/etc. there should be no reason we need banks to conduct basic tasks which are increasingly digital only. irrc, proposals do not include any mechanism to reliably associated transactions over time with an individual's identity. if implemented it would increase privacy, as it would deprive banks/online middlement/etc. from having your transaction hisotry which is usually trivially accessible by law enforcement anyway

verisimi 3y ago
I guess that means they won't track you then! Lol
wwwtyro 3y ago
I'd be worried they'd wait until the population was reliant upon it, and then flip a switch disabling privacy. Seems risky.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  'they' are the population -- you can read BoE proposals on digital currency in the open; and likewise, the legal framework will be public the 'they' who flip switches are more company boards, rather than public democratic institutions of western liberal states for them to implement anything other than published papers on the system, it would require a conspiracy -- one unjustified given how trivial it is to monitor people anyway
tjpnz 3y ago
>it's a way of central banks taking back control of the currency system from mastercard/paypal/yourbank/etc. The middlemen are going to fight this to the very end, even if they have to resort to dirty tactics. It's no wonder that so much misinformation has cropped up on these in the last few years.
kolanos 3y ago

alexb_ 3y ago

Why did you post this with such an editorialized title?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

politelemon 3y ago

Flagged for misleading title. Also is anyone having trouble scrolling the page on mobile? It seems to want to jump everywhere except the place I want it to.

janandonly 3y ago
Would you have read the article if HN had shown the original title: The Digital Finance Voyage: A Case for Public Sector Involvement Keynote address, Singapore Fintech Festival ?
- dang 3y ago
  It's against HN's rules to do that - see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: ""Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize."". If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22level%20playing%20field%22%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... I know it sounds like an arbitrary rule, and I agree that it has some disadvantages, but if we didn't have it, HN would be quite a different place. Titles are by far the biggest influence on threads. Allowing the submitter to put their own point of view in the title would give them special control over the discussion. We want the starting point of discussions here to be more neutral than that.