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Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

reuters.com

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Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#41

Post by tluyben2 »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #17

I am not even that old and I remember a time when every small city had 4 banks right next to eachother. All gone. Now banking is an app. Haven't used cash since forever- you have to literally google maps the nearest ATM.

Country? Here (Spain) many places do take cards/contactless but it's usually 'broken' under E100 or they just simply refuse anything but cash. Eveyone has wads of cash etc.

And not only 'the south', Berlin (Germany) has it too; many places don't take cards; they insist on cash.

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#42

Post by razius »

StavrosK wrote: post #16
fjiizrsdfjjj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I think your comment points out a big issue in our societies. However, note that the article isn't about Bitcoin. Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) basically operate with a centralized database; no "mining", no pseudo-anonymity, most important, no gambling-like course changes. It represents the "offline money" 1:1, only is it managed centralized rather than federalized by many banks.

Wouldn't that also mean perfect visibility into the movement of money, and the death of cash? Seems to me that perfect visibility into funds will be as deleterious to society as perfect law enforcement. How are you going to lead the next BLM, or LGBTQ rights, or just a plain old revolution when you can't fund anything? There was a time, not long ago, when being gay was actually against the law. Imagine wanting to bui…

Yes. It gives absolute control of money to one central entity, they can monitory and choose who has access to it and how are they using it.

As a digital currency is essentially programmable money so rules and conditions on how it's spent can be set like what's the interest rate (negative rates also are possible), if there's a time limit on spending or rules on how much you are allowed to hold.

Anonymity is also gone, from https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/other/Report_on_a_digital_...:

- https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Erou2mQW4AA-ixa?format=png&name=... - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eror-rYW4AAJBLz?format=png&name=...

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#43

Post by jeofken »

StavrosK wrote: post #16
fjiizrsdfjjj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I think your comment points out a big issue in our societies. However, note that the article isn't about Bitcoin. Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) basically operate with a centralized database; no "mining", no pseudo-anonymity, most important, no gambling-like course changes. It represents the "offline money" 1:1, only is it managed centralized rather than federalized by many banks.

Wouldn't that also mean perfect visibility into the movement of money, and the death of cash? Seems to me that perfect visibility into funds will be as deleterious to society as perfect law enforcement. How are you going to lead the next BLM, or LGBTQ rights, or just a plain old revolution when you can't fund anything? There was a time, not long ago, when being gay was actually against the law. Imagine wanting to bui…

BLM and LGBTQP is already supported by the state. The army and police join the pride parade, and last summer a Swedish policewoman kneeled down for rioting foreigners with the sign “white silence is violence”. Those movements represent the establishment.

In Sweden, nationalists, libertarians, and conservatives are hounded by the state.

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#44

Post by bjeds »

etrautmann wrote: post #37
jeofken wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this reason it’s important we start using cash again, and not attend shops and restaurants that don’t take it. Nowadays we have brutal armed robberies like never before, but using non-traceable currency is important for freedom.

Source? I would have thought “brutal armed robberies” were way down from historical highs.

Here is one source about robberies being roughly twice (maybe 1.7-1.9x) as common in 2019 as the period 2006-2015: The graph says "Percentage (of population being) victim of robbery": https://www.bra.se/statistik/statistik-utifran-brottstyper/r...

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#45

Post by eswat »

> “If you have a bank account but you can - at the click of a button - move your money to the central bank ... that could risk instability in the system,” Yazdi said.

> Riksbank Deputy Governor Cecilia Skingsley has dismissed such concerns, saying people can already exit the banking system by buying treasury bills.

Not sure about Sweden but I don't believe many retail banks make buying t-bills as easy as a click of a button, unless you were using their brokerage.

Few laymen are excited about converting their cash to t-bills. But digital currencies like CBDCs are part of the cryptocurrency wave that has a lot more of the general population interested.

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#46

Post by jeofken »

AniseAbyss wrote: post #17

I am not even that old and I remember a time when every small city had 4 banks right next to eachother. All gone. Now banking is an app. Haven't used cash since forever- you have to literally google maps the nearest ATM.

If you love freedom, like very few of us Swedes do, use non-traceable and uncensorable payments like cash.

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#47

Post by mongol »

I think you would not deposit your money at the Riksbank, they would issue it but you would need to store it somewhere? Existing banks could offer that, but for a service charge, which would basically mean negative interest. For that reason, this is a less attractive option for storing more than pocket-money and the fear that banks would lose business might be exaggregated.

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#48

Post by bryanrasmussen »

etrautmann wrote: post #37
jeofken wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this reason it’s important we start using cash again, and not attend shops and restaurants that don’t take it. Nowadays we have brutal armed robberies like never before, but using non-traceable currency is important for freedom.

Source? I would have thought “brutal armed robberies” were way down from historical highs.

I have a theory that as the intelligence of solutions preventing crime increases some forms of criminality will become more violent in order to defeat the crime prevention - for example car jacking as a way to get cars because breaking into cars became too difficult for common criminals due to alarms etc.

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#49

Post by imtringued »

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #20
bjeds wrote: post #15

As a Swedish person I don't see the point at all: Why would I want to use this? I would rather have a decentralized system of various banks and global companies (Mastercard, Visa, etc) track my transactions and spread out that risk, instead of one single state actor. I could also use, you know, cash. Digital cash is first and foremost an instrument for new ways to do monetary policy, as more countries (like Sweden an…

And I believe the Swedish central bank has thought about you you could apply -ve interest rates to bank accounts as Sweden is so massively a non cash society.

I wonder about that. In theory it means you can have interest rates that are well below 0% (think of -2% or worse). The idea behind negative interest rates is that there is work to be done that cannot be financed at a 0% interest rate and that the interest rate has to be even lower.

If you assume 2% bank fees and a -3% interest rate it would be possible for banks to hand out -1% loans and that would allow financially insecure consumers to acquire loans because you cannot default by definition. Your principal will shrink even if you do nothing.

Will this work? I feel like it could work but it could also have unintended consequences.

Re: Swedish bankers face identity crisis over digital currency plans

#50

Post by wincy »

twelve40 wrote: post #29
spongepoc wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market economy in fact solves many problems of 'helping other people' that we have just become so used to that we don't appreciate its complexity. The fact that food is produced in abundance and is distributed in time to population centres for convenient consumption is a marvel of the modern world. And we're only getting better at it over time. That's helping people.

that's a great point, but. Just like the moon landing, some degree of food security in the "first world" countries has been achieved many decades ago now. Maybe it's time for some new achievements, like, i dunno, security against mystery viruses, or something else to write home about?

It didn’t feel all that secure in March of last year.

And I mean, the MRNA vaccine seems pretty amazing that rollout began worldwide in less than a year from a novel coronavirus popping up. But the same people working in agriculture aren’t working on virus research. The market decides where to allocate resources, are you advocating for some sort of central planning in lieu of this? What would a different system look like that doesn’t have the major pitfalls that the Soviet government had, where strange things happened like nearly hunting whales to extinction because they needed to make the 1967 whale oil quota?

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