Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 82 posts

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#41

Post by [deleted] »

navidfarhadi wrote: post #8
surfsvammel wrote: post #2

My company’s suggested implementation made it to the second round of proposals. Unfortunately we are not involved any more. There are some serious challenges that needs to be ironed out. Two that comes to mind is how to solve offline payments, the other one is how to live up to the requirement from the government that the currency needs to be liquid also during a crisis (what if electricity or telecom doesn’t work?)…

> My company’s suggested implementation made it to the second round of proposals. If you don't mind me asking what company do you work for? I am actually studying computer science (security and privacy emphasis) at KTH in Sweden and I have been interested in CBDC for some time now. If your company offers master's theses I would love to connect on LinkedIn or via email. > the other one is how to live up to the require…

[deleted]

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#42

Post by gruez »

bitxbit wrote: post #20

All these banks and financial institutions launching digital currencies miss the whole point: FRICTIONLESS transactions. Right now you have layers upon layers of network companies nickle and diming you. This is literally someone taking a penny from everyone’s account except it is a lot more than that. There’s absolutely no reason for Mastercard and Visa to even exist in 2020. They’re sitting on top of some obsolete i…

Isn't SEPA free for retail bank customers?

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#43

Post by koala_man »

acuster wrote: post #31

Kudos to the swedes for working methodically to try to find a way for the central bank to issue digital money. They have been working for a number of years on this and seem to be thinking effectively about all of the issues involved. One of the reasons that most interest me in this type of digital money comes from its use by the government itself within its various branches. Moving the financial accounts of the gover…

As a historical fun fact, Sweden was also the first country in Europe to adopt paper money. They needed more currency but didn't have access to the Americas and its precious metals to mint coins.

Currently, 1 US Dollar is worth around 10 Swedish Kroner. Both currencies ultimately started out equally at 1oz silver, but since Sweden could easily just print more, they couldn't contain themselves and caused a 4x inflation in the 1700s (the other ~2.5x is since WW2).

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#44

Post by gruez »

volgar1x wrote: post #13
vinniejames wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Git is somewhat like a blockchain though

Without proof of work

having proof of work or not is orthogonal to whether it's a blockchain or not. see: blockchains for proof of stake cryptocurrencies.

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#45

Post by fierarul »

jariel wrote: post #34

Since currency is de-facto already digitized, and everyone does everything electronically, how the h is an e-currency different from what's already there?

I guess one advantage is that now every marketing company/institution can analyze the entire flow of money within the country.

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#46

Post by jernejzen »

darawk wrote: post #39
dandanua wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be solved by making all ordinary transactions public. Blockchain is not needed in 100% of the cases when central authority is in place.

There is a difference between deciding all transactions will be published and making them public by design constraint. Blockchains make transactions public by design , and this design cannot be easily subverted by the people running it.

Not really. Ever heard Monero or Zcash fe?

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#47

Post by darawk »

jernejzen wrote: post #46
darawk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between deciding all transactions will be published and making them public by design constraint. Blockchains make transactions public by design , and this design cannot be easily subverted by the people running it.

Not really. Ever heard Monero or Zcash fe?

I certainly have. But this system is not designed like them.

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#48

Post by teh_infallible »

rabuse wrote: post #7
lawn wrote: post #3

> The pilot will run until February 2021 and will use block-chain technology, the Riksbank said. Will it really? Riksbanken can have a central server to resolve any double spends, which is only really a problem in a decentralized network. Once you have a singular authority you can just let them decide, and you'll have no need for an inefficient cryptocurrency. > which is being developed by consulting firm Accenture A…

It's buzzwords being thrown around again. Blockchain is highly inefficient for anything other than decentralized consensus.

Are blockchains inefficient if you’re not using proof of work? I thought it was the latter that was a source of inefficiency, and you don’t need PoW on a permissioned network.

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#49

Post by leppr »

darawk wrote: post #39
dandanua wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can be solved by making all ordinary transactions public. Blockchain is not needed in 100% of the cases when central authority is in place.

There is a difference between deciding all transactions will be published and making them public by design constraint. Blockchains make transactions public by design , and this design cannot be easily subverted by the people running it.

> There is a difference between deciding all transactions will be published and making them public by design constraint.

In a "blockchain" with a centralized validator set, there's no constraint forcing transactions to be public. The network will keep running even if the validators decide to stop publishing transactions. It's very much still a social contract.

Tampering (adding false transactions) is the only thing that could be hampered thanks to the requirement of client signatures: transaction/partial information censoring will still be possible. But in reality such a system will have the design constraint that funds must be seizable by the government, which in turn negates the only remaining technical advantage of a "centralized blockchain".

All that's left is the now empty word "blockchain". It's going to fit perfectly next to "democracy".

Re: Sweden’s central bank says it has begun testing an e-krona

#50

Post by teh_infallible »

socialdemocrat wrote: post #32
lawn wrote: post #3

> The pilot will run until February 2021 and will use block-chain technology, the Riksbank said. Will it really? Riksbanken can have a central server to resolve any double spends, which is only really a problem in a decentralized network. Once you have a singular authority you can just let them decide, and you'll have no need for an inefficient cryptocurrency. > which is being developed by consulting firm Accenture A…

Problem with a central server for money is that it makes the whole state vulnerable. If everybody use central bank e-currency you can just attack their sever to destroy the flow of all money. But if it is distributed like real crypto currency, you have to be able to attack and take down hundreds or thousands of severs geographically spread.

I don’t know why your comment is being downvoted. That was my understanding as well. A distributed ledger is much harder to tamper with, which is why “blockchain technology” is actually a reasonable solution to this problem, IMO. I am open to being proven wrong, though
Post reply on HN