So you remember those people that said there wasn’t any need for Crypto and that it wasn’t fast enough to make a need for it? You remember them arguing that crypto wasn’t that important? Well looks like they are wrong…again.
But over a span of two years, the world’s leading central banks have gone from skeptical to serious about a government form of digital currency. When the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center began this project in 2020, thirty-five central banks were exploring a CBDC; as of today, that number is 114. The motivations vary in each economy, but there are some common themes. The first is the pandemic, or more specifically, the lessons learned from it. At the height of COVID-19, many countries—including the United States—discovered how antiquated their financial plumbing was. The distribution of stimulus checks that could have taken hours sometimes took weeks. As the global economy likely heads into a recession in 2023, the need to improve delivery of money to citizens is paramount for policymakers.
Andy
Who can see this really taking hold, it’s to late to try and stop it.
I’m not a crypto expert, so please correct me if I’m wrong.
The official bank-to-bank digital currency is just a form of electronic funds transfer (EFT) that I use every day to pay my bills and taxes (and receive my tax refund). There’s nothing mysterious or nefarious about it. It’s just book-keeping, eliminating the inefficiency of sending paper around. This is all regulated by the appropriate government oversight (e.g. the Treasury, Federal Reserve, etc.) International funds transfers (bank to bank and eventually probably between individuals over a government-owned blockchain) is similar, right?
Crypto, on the other hand, was explicitly developed to be outside of government control.
The official bank-to-bank digital currency is just a form of electronic funds transfer (EFT)
If crypto enthusiasts ever find out what the words ‘digital’ and ‘electronic’ mean in relation to currency, they’ll be furious to realise the banks were 4-5 decades ahead of bitcoin with digital electronic currency ledgers…
I am not an expert either, but I do like looking into it and posting things on the board. The more I post the more I learn about it because some people come up with good points. Here is how I see it now.
Bitcoin was explicitly developed to be outside of government control.
Other Crypto coins were developed to provide gas to fund their projects that they are building on platforms. IE Ethereum and other platforms. What these platforms are trying to do is make it cheaper and faster to move money across boarders. IE Chainlink and Swift. In that article it shows that the United States is trying to get into the game by building a CBDC coin. Which completely tells me now that Ethereum and Chainlink were correct that it was to costly and to slow. Now I do not know how this is going to work out but I am watching to see what is going to be built out in Fintech. I think that these Web3 platforms will be the next big disruptions in the financial industry. I could be wrong but it does seem to be moving along.
Central banks and governments should love digital money, what better way is there to trace and control people?
The Captain
There was a time when the Venezuelan Chavez government put a tax on bank deposits so I went to cash. The government also made it illegal to hold or trade in foreign exchange. My broker got around the latter by matching up buyers and sellers and that was the way I could buy bolivars for my ordinary expenses. After one such transaction I went to cash a rather large check. The transaction took a very long time. A bank manager came up to me to apologize for the delay, a most unusual happening. Finally I was given the cash, a pack of 100 shiny new Bs.100 bills fresh off the press.
It all sounded so funny and fishy that on getting home I checked out the bills. They were in perfect order by serial number but three random bills had been replaced with different serial numbers.
S-crew you! I took out the three bills and kept them for serveral months. Then I used them to pay for gas on the road when travelling to distant cities.
The latest effort to run aground was that of A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S and International Business Machines Corp., which hoped to follow ship-ments via the blockchain. Last month, Maersk said the project would be discontinued. Another big effort, Walmart Inc.’s attempt to track groceries on the blockchain, contin-ues, but slowly.
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“There’s not one com-pany that has really shown, let’s say, a mater-ial change,” Francesco Bozzano, vice president of the corporate finance group at Moody’s In-vestors Service, said of blockchain efforts in supply chains.
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It has been slow going or worse for big bets on blockchain for a number of reasons: the complexity of the technology, the time required to get a blockchain into operation and the difficulties in enlisting participants.
Yeah, all those brave new technologies, struggling to find a problem to solve.
… and perhaps as a counterproposal to fiat currencies that can be (and are) inflated at will by central banks and TPTB.
More recently, larger players and even some governments are catching on to it as they promise some protection against other governments projecting their power through fiat-associated sanctions, gratuitous or not.
I think you are conflating (love that word) a lot of issues here. “Cryptocurrency” is a type of digital currency that is unregulated and decentralized. CBDC is a digital form of fiat money and is therefore highly regulated and centralized. “Web3” is blockchain-based technology that provides a decentralized and unregulated means of storing and transferring information.
Given those definitions, I don’t see how CBDC relates to crypto or Web3. I doubt that nations are going agree to lose control of their currency or allow that currency to become unregulated. Blockchain may eventually be adapted for use by centralized financial institutions to speed up currency transfers and conversions but I know of no proposal to replace central banks with blockchain.
So yes, it is possible that fiat money will be made digital and central banks might use blockchain to move that money around. But as long as central banks control and regulate that money, there is no revolution and not much of a disruption. It’s like moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
Like I have said btresist all technology is built upon other technology and all the time there are a lot of people that stand around wagging a finger saying it isn’t a big deal until 80 years later you look back and say “Wow” look at where we are now. As an American I can vouch that every move forward creates a chain link effect that moves us all further along. But as for your equating this from moving from Windows 7 to Window 10. You really have to be joking. One was a company upgrading their system but the crypto movement is forcing governments to upgrade their whole system. Much much different.
I think we need some definitions. Crytpocurrencies use blockchain and are decentralized. CBDCs don’t use blockchain (at least the United States doesn’t seem interested in blockchain for its CBDC) and are definitely centralized.
And crypto definitely has uses. Ransomeware attacks wouldn’t exist without crypto. And it still works well for drug and human trafficking as well.
Ahh the same person that told me that there wasn’t any need for faster exchanges or funds and that the Chainlink project couldn’t be cheaper than the way we are doing it now. Looks like the Federal government disagrees with you as I did. Just one proof point that you were completely wrong. Also CBDC’s could use blockchains, they would just be private blockchains. Until they are built out we really won’t know exactly how they operate. Looks like you need to read a lot more.
Yea Syke, using the same old tired stories and reasoning is really not doing anyone, especially you, understand what is going on in this arena. This is really happening and even the United States is getting involved now. There isn’t any going back, the genie is out of the bottle. So instead of planting a flag, why not help people understand it, and what is being accomplished.
Not really. Both Monopoly money and US currency use a form of paper. That doesn’t make the two equivalent. The difference is that the value of US currency is backed by a central bank, Monopoly money not so much. Same is true for the difference between crypto and CBDC. Sure both are digital. But the US dollar is backed by a central bank, crypto not so much. As for Web3, it is fundamentally a decentralized network. A central bank using blockchain is still centralized. It is not Web3.
To summarize, digital US currency is still fiat money. A central bank using blockchain is still Web2. This means that what your OP is describing is just a reiteration of the same institutions with newer technology. Like moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10. The latter allows touch screen, but it is still fundamentally Windows.
The early crypto people were libertarians who sought that.
In the complications of transfers that is not the reality.
The real purpose of crypto morphed into something it is meant to be as Eth was created. The purpose being to fulfill our digital economy with a digital means of exchange.
Meaning transferring USD as you mentioned with a bank transfer is not a digital currency or more importantly a digital asset.
The blockchains, in particular BTC and Eth, create “digital scarcity”. Any prior digital thing could have infinite perfect copies. The blockchain does that by means of a complex calculated math to mine the tokens.
There is a finite number of pictures of my bottom stored on computers around the world. Nonetheless, I remain poor. From this we can deduce that ‘scarcity’ does not bestow value on the valueless.
I think that says more about you than it does about Crypto. The Marilyn Monroe playboy is worth 6,000 dollars and had infinite perfect copies, but that shows you the difference of the product. One worth nothing the other worth 6000 dollars.
But you are still incorrect about Ethereum product has infinite coins because it’s value is not predicated on scarcity. All Crypto is not the same.