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Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

bankofengland.co.uk

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Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#21

Post by cblconfederate »

canoebuilder wrote: post #12

Bitcoin, et al. seek to approximate a monetary system, to bootstrap a workable currency outside the traditional trappings of a centralized state. Being digital is not the point, it just makes the idea possible whether or not it works in practice. What exactly would a central bank “digital currency” bring to the table? Dollars, pounds, yen, are already digital.

It is a headache for banks, as they lose some of the rents (all kinds of public funds going through them). This should have no impact on cryptocurrencies.

Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#22

Post by corobo »

ur-whale wrote: post #9
the-dude wrote: post #3

A taskforce is being created. That's all folks.

Design by committee, what could possibly go wrong.

In fairness Bitcoin wasn't designed by committee and it's up there with CFCs in how much of a detriment it is to the environment

Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#23

Post by casi18 »

Nursie wrote: post #14
itsdsmurrell wrote: post #4

This is great... easier rails into hard money (crypto).

Just no. Hard money is not desirable. Whatever comes out of this "the country's money supply should be determined by some cryptobros" is not going to be the result.

I get the "anti-crypto-bro" sentiments, but Ive trusted the FOSS/linux communities for long enough to have open and auditable tech and clear decision making, it might not be perfect but it is a lot more transparent than my government.

I'd pick the crypto-communities and thousands of people gaming them to design better mechanisms for the everyday people to use, than a few politicians and the banks that are bribing them.

Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#25

Post by vishnugupta »

Nursie wrote: post #16
canoebuilder wrote: post #12

Bitcoin, et al. seek to approximate a monetary system, to bootstrap a workable currency outside the traditional trappings of a centralized state. Being digital is not the point, it just makes the idea possible whether or not it works in practice. What exactly would a central bank “digital currency” bring to the table? Dollars, pounds, yen, are already digital.

The change here, from what I can tell, is that you could have consumers directly dealing with the central bank, holding accounts directly with it, cutting out the traditional retail banks. I'm not sure one way or another if that's a good idea, and I guess they aren't either, hence the forming a committee to investigate.

Indeed, that's the biggest change I could think of. Another, minor but important, change is CBDC will completely eliminate physical cash. How will that pan out is to be seen.

FWIW, China has been the farthest on this path to the extent that they are claiming they will do a 100% rollout by next year's Winter Olympics.

This is a really interesting phase in this space.

Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#26

Post by marcus_holmes »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #15
codeulike wrote: post #8

They should make it work on the 'old money' system of penny, shilling and pound, with twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to the pound, then use the abbreviation 'd' for pence, and then throw in farthings (quarter penny) and half-crowns (two shillings and six pence) because if there's one thing I've learnt about finance, its that the more confusing things are, the easier it is to make a profit.

While in general quite confusing, I cannot help but notice, that they used to use better divisible numbers like 12, to go to the next bigger unit. I also read that Babylonians or whoever it was, used a system with base 60, even better divisible. I wonder how it would affect our daily lives, if we still had such better divisible numbers in use with money today. For example 60 cent make a euro or dollar or whatever. Of…

My parents grew up with the "old money", and my father in particular always said that it was easier to work with because everything divided by 2,3 or 4 easily. His opinion was always that the new money was introduced to make computerisation easier. In other words, the benefit wasn't for humans (who prefer working in 12's), but for computers.

Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#27

Post by gajotron »

Nursie wrote: post #16
canoebuilder wrote: post #12

Bitcoin, et al. seek to approximate a monetary system, to bootstrap a workable currency outside the traditional trappings of a centralized state. Being digital is not the point, it just makes the idea possible whether or not it works in practice. What exactly would a central bank “digital currency” bring to the table? Dollars, pounds, yen, are already digital.

The change here, from what I can tell, is that you could have consumers directly dealing with the central bank, holding accounts directly with it, cutting out the traditional retail banks. I'm not sure one way or another if that's a good idea, and I guess they aren't either, hence the forming a committee to investigate.

This process of cutting out traditional retail banks destroys liquidity, which the central bank knows it would probably have to offset through either becoming an explicit uncollateralised lender to banks or other monetary policy. They are likely to be very conservative about that.

Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#28

Post by RichEO »

casi18 wrote: post #23
Nursie wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just no. Hard money is not desirable. Whatever comes out of this "the country's money supply should be determined by some cryptobros" is not going to be the result.

I get the "anti-crypto-bro" sentiments, but Ive trusted the FOSS/linux communities for long enough to have open and auditable tech and clear decision making, it might not be perfect but it is a lot more transparent than my government. I'd pick the crypto-communities and thousands of people gaming them to design better mechanisms for the everyday people to use, than a few politicians and the banks that are bribing the…

I think you might be over estimating the overlap between the FOSS/Linux community and the crytobro community - at least as it exists in 2021

Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#29

Post by oblio »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #15
codeulike wrote: post #8

They should make it work on the 'old money' system of penny, shilling and pound, with twelve pence to a shilling and twenty shillings to the pound, then use the abbreviation 'd' for pence, and then throw in farthings (quarter penny) and half-crowns (two shillings and six pence) because if there's one thing I've learnt about finance, its that the more confusing things are, the easier it is to make a profit.

While in general quite confusing, I cannot help but notice, that they used to use better divisible numbers like 12, to go to the next bigger unit. I also read that Babylonians or whoever it was, used a system with base 60, even better divisible. I wonder how it would affect our daily lives, if we still had such better divisible numbers in use with money today. For example 60 cent make a euro or dollar or whatever. Of…

The problem is not a micro-optimization such as using base 10 or base 12. The problem is that we can't all agree on a common measurement system and the biggest economy in the world stubbornly keeps using an archaic and sub-optimal system that it's actively pushing onto the rest of us.

For example, instead of having screen details in sqcm (and aspect ratios), we have inches (and maaaaybe aspect rations mentioned somewhere). This is being pushed > around the world because of freaking device screens.

It's like a comment about I saw about nature: if we see a rodent eating a bug, that's a bit gross but it's ok (the rodent being a mammal and therefore closer to us, so "superior"), but if we saw a bug eating a rodent, we're appalled. Right now the US imperial measurement system seems like that bug trying to eat the rodent (metric/decimal system).

Re: Bank of England to explore a potential Central Bank Digital Currency

#30

Post by KaiserPro »

I've not really understood the need for a "digital" pound, the pound is pretty digital already.

I can already have an entirely digital bank account from at least three "challenger" banks. There are also now at least two business accounts that also entirely virtual. "Faster Payments" (customer bank transfers) are delivered in seconds.

I can see a need for speeding up BACS, and reducing the price of CHAPS, but apart from that, there isn't much wrong with the pound.

changing to having an open ledger(bitcoin style) isn't entirely great as a normal citizen. I don't really want my entire financial history to be picked over by advertisers, insurance companies, future employers, and spam/scam bots.

A government isn't ever going to allow a normal citizen to have a anonymous payments system so I don't see them allowing a purely private and anonymous currency (ala-monero)

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