759
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
759 points (100.0% liked)
News
23413 readers
2245 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Why would the government put time into making fake money when they can just make more real money?
Our money is already "fake money"
You know what would make it better? If we had dozens of them!
Couldn't tell if this was a joke about the number of cryptocurrencies that exist... But in case it was, we already do have dozens of "fake currencies." In fact, there are people who make a career through arbitrage between these currencies.
I can understand if you want to call any kind of Fiat currency "fake money" - doesn't mean I think it should be abandoned in favor of some arbitrary metal or whatever, but I can understand it.
That said, any kind of currency works when it's standardized. Obviously it will be regionalized by country or whatever. Making up multiple cryptocurrencies as alternatives to what we have now slides us in the direction of a barter system ("I don't take Bitcoin, you'll have to get that converted to Ethereum. Oh, BTC is down against that? Sucks to suck!")
And let's say the cryptobros get their way and we end up with (whatever crypto you choose) as a standard currency for the country/world/universe. Who would benefit most from that, and why should they? The way I see it, the early adopters would live like kings and if you didn't gamble on the right crypto early, you better hope you can get something for your assets, including the cash of today.
Nah it's been invented, but working for many decades without all the crypto shit
Because electronic payments that do not require a middleman are inherently better than funneling everything through centralized organizations like Visa. They could make their own dollar based blockchain that has secure and private transactions based on their own stablecoin. It would be the same as a cash payment.
Again, why would the government waste real money doing that with fake money, when they can do it with real money instead? What benefit is there, over just being a regular processor for real money? Because it's definitely not the inability to reverse transactions in blockchain systems, that's more of a feature for criminals.
I have a very strong feeling that @paf0@lemmy.world is being downvoted here, not because they make a bad point, but because they phrased it in terms of cryptocurrency which immediately triggers negative reactions from everyone.
What OP has proposed is neither novel, nor a terrible idea. In fact, economists call it a central bank digital currency. And yes, some countries have adopted it. It's usually not run with a blockchain, but that's because if you have a trusted central entity to run the system, that being the central bank, a blockchain is inferior in practically every aspect to a normal relational database. That's why all current CBDCs still use fairly traditional accounting systems.
Your use, however, of the terms "real money" and "fake money" has, I believe, the effect of shutting down intelligent conversation, rather than encouraging it. "Money" is a social construct. "Real money" is whatever the Government declares to be "real" and that the population is willing to use. It doesn't need to be physical money. And it is unquestionable that in the countries that have adopted the legal framework that allows their central banks to issue CBDCs, the money so issued this way is as real and legally equivalent to paper banknotes and metal coins.
I struggle with the idea that "real money", even as crypto, needs to be centralized and easily tracked. It's not just about crime, it's about privacy. The federal reserve doesn't need to know the movements of every single individual. If I lend you $10, and you don't pay me back, it's both embarrassing for me and embarrassing for you, but we're good friends and this is just between us. Maybe you could provide that sort of anonymity on a relational database, but it doesn't have to be centralized. The blockchain tech gets faster and faster and not everyone has to be a full node, they could just run it at banks, maybe even with a bridge to other systems.
Anyway, I understand where people are coming from, blockchain was ruined by cryptobros and scammers. It's not an inherently evil idea, it may be inadequate in speed as compared to Visa, but the idea that I could take the middleman out of any business while still having common listings, and make it a conversation between a supplier and consumer is fundamentally good. We do not need Sabre or Expedia taking 15% of every hotel or airline booking. We do need Uber's secret pricing on rideshares. Very little value is added by middlemen in those transactions, where, in the end, the reputation of the provider is paramount- and yes, things can be set up so that provider can be vetted by third parties. The promise of blockchain is not NFTs, it's freedom to do business in a different way, and some of the limiting factors holding it back are the lack of clear regulations for the industry, and a trusted stablecoin network.
There are a few types of "anonymity".
The highest level of anonymity is perfect anonymity, where it is literally impossible to prove a transaction occurred or know anything about that transaction without being a party to that transaction. Some private cryptocurrencies are truly perfectly anonymous because it's cryptographically infeasible to determine who paid whom and how much was paid without being a party to that transaction. Metal coins are generally perfectly anonymous. Paper money is nearly perfectly anonymous. They still have serial numbers that can be traced. It is easy to make arguments that perfect anonymity is undesirable because the drawbacks of allowing criminals, terrorist organisations, or sanctioned states to transact freely and in complete secrecy outweigh the privacy benefits to normal people compared to what they enjoy with lower levels of anonymity. I am not here to make an argument about this.
The next-highest level is what I will call "legal anonymity", where knowledge of transaction details is tightly restricted by law. If you think of Swiss bank secrecy laws, this is close to what I mean. A CBDC can operate at this level of anonymity. The central bank would still theoretically know all details of all transactions, but the use of this information would be legally restricted and cannot be used for mass surveillance. However, the information is still retrievable by means of some defined legal process, such as a court subpoena or specific search warrant.
The level below that is what I will call "discretionary anonymity". This is where a third party knows all the transaction details, and the restrictions on what they can do with this information are either weak or non-existent. Hence, your privacy is at the discretion of whoever holds this information. This form of privacy is weak compared to the other forms but a large portion of the population still finds this level of anonymity to be acceptable for everyday transactions. Bank transactions in the USA are discretionarily private. The bank can use and exploit the transaction data it knows with relatively few legal restrictions.
The final level is pseudo-anonymity, where transaction data is publicly accessible, but some information (such as the exact names of the payor and payee) is not provided. Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies are pseudo-anonymous.
Why, for tracking of course!
Actually, that is a decent point in this idea's favor. Don't think that'll overcome the downsides, but I'll give you a point for that one all the same.
It would be real money if the federal reserve issued it. Cash still exists, is that a feature for criminals or does it benefit the poor and unbanked?
No, as you said, its a stable coin backed by real money.
Cash transactions can easily be reversed, unlike blockchain, but nice bait.
Literally the opposite is true...
if the government was to do their own crypto it could do a lot to disrupt the current unregulated "stablecoins" that currently exist, i could see it happing if for no other reason than to fight money laundering. If the fed is doing it, it becomes "real" money and most people would probably prefer a fed coin to something like usdt.
Money is made from belief. Why would the public at large believe it to be a real currency?
if the banks and federal government say it is and accept it as such then it is by definition "real" currency.
Online payments, which is a lot of transactions.
Pretty sure the current system of real money already handles that one friend.