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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

#151

Post by arberx »

casi18 wrote: post #60
RichEO wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think HN repeatedly underestimates the overlap of these communities. FOSS ideology is critical in pretty much all crypto/defi projects.I can probably pick any dev in the space and they'll most likely be running linux. HN refuses to change its collective position it settled on a decade ago. It seems people here got stuck on some abstract projections of "crypto-capitalism-cruelty" and refuse to admit there might be s…

Preach!

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

#152

Post by jaredtn »

throwaway3699 wrote: post #144
max_ wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or better, 0.000001 pounds for streaming a song from my privately hosted streaming service.

That's a tiny amount of money. Or are you going to listen to a million songs for £1? It's still reasonable to batch a few hundred listens for a small transaction every month.

The parent comment was about enabling micropayments, not the proper price for a song. Forest for the trees...

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

#153

Post by sec400 »

jfjfntntkt wrote: post #72
KaiserPro wrote: post #30

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 fr…

Please tell me how I can transfer one pound from me to you using a 20 line Python script? That's what people mean by digital currency. If you are going to mention the open banking API initiative, then what are the requirements to get access to that? You can't as an individual. Also, this was the easy case, inter-UK. Now tell me how to transfer using Python and without applying to all kinds of regulators for API acces…

You can sign up for an N26 account via smartphone app and then use this (unofficial) python library https://github.com/femueller/python-n26

I fully agree with you though, the Open Banking outcome in reality almost looks like a joke. I only found the above as I was searching for a while to find a way to do this that didn't involve building my own screen scrapers to implement.

There are banking offerings in the UK with official APIs however you are looking at £200/month+ in costs.

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

#154

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

iudqnolq wrote: post #148
mytailorisrich wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guys, please try to read about "digital currency" before writing snarky replies and downvoting. Currency is currently not digital in the sense meant here. Otherwise the BoE and other central banks would not discuss the possibility of issuing digital currency. It's rather the banks' ledgers and transfer instructions that are digital. In my previous comment I have only tried to explain what CBDC is. Perhaps I did not d…

> Currency is currently not digital in the sense meant here. Otherwise the BoE and other central banks would not discuss the possibility of issuing digital currency. The alternative is of course that it's all meaningless hype. Just because the government does something doesn't necessarily prove it makes sense.

From a government point of view, a "Taskforce to coordinate the exploration of a potential ..." (quoting from the article) often makes sense, and doesn't necessarily result in anything much resembling action. See also "kicking it into the long grass".

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

#155

Post by casi18 »

ObserverNeutral wrote: post #131
casi18 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I now barely use my bank account, i get paid in dai, i pay others in dai. occasionally i have to move dai into fiat for bills. hopefully these central bank digital currencies help bridge that last step. i love it because i can write programs to move my money around. I can stream payments with https://sablier.finance i can lend and borrow with https://aave.com I get paid universal basic income each hour from https://w…

This stuff doesn't scale. The 99% is represented by the regular normie citizen who likes intermediaries because they don't want the responsibility. The legacy financial system with intermediaries didn't emerge from some evil dictators pushing it onto the world. It spurred from the market desires, and the market is made up of the regular normie citizens AKA the 99% Despite what the headlines say, the 99% as a whole co…

Maybe it doesnt scale? lets try it. Maybe 99% of people dont want to use it? Cool, lets try it.

We don't have to be 100% better, we have to be 0.1% better. I think that is absolutely in reach. I think that will be transformational for many. It will not bring us utopia, it might have bad side effects, hopefully the good outweighs the bad.

And is this not spurred from market desires too? How do we know the difference between genuine forces of innovation and a temporary trend?

I remember using the internet for the first time in the late 90s, it was slow and clunky and magical. We had twenty years of silicon valley startup culture, there was some fun there, but it is so tired. Crypto-communities are the most fun i've had on the internet in a long long time. And the DeFi/DAO/Ethereum stacks feel magical.

Maybe i'm wrong and it is nothing in the long term, but maybe we dont have to assume the authority of the legacy system is legitimate. Maybe the feeling of liberation it brings with it, and the love in the community, will drive the space to continue to out-perform the markets, out-innovate the fintech startups, and out-last the legacy systems.

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

#156

Post by eruleman »

lainga wrote: post #133
rvense wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also just a control thing. When private enterprises control (and create) money, they will do so based on their own interests. These might not align with the best interests of society at large.

Well, in Keynesian analysis, the private enterprises are supposed to create money. The gov't manages how much they create though reserve requirements.

"As announced on March 15, 2020, the Board reduced reserve requirement ratios to zero percent effective March 26, 2020. "

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/reservereq.htm

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

#157

Post by lottin »

jfjfntntkt wrote: post #86
300bps wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if the person you send the money to doesn’t deliver? What happens if someone compromises your account and sends all of your money away fraudulently? These are just two basic things that the current financial system deals with thousands of times per day. And what about fees? BTC, ETH and many other coins are essentially unusable for smaller transactions. Sending .02 ETH (about $45) from my MEW wallet cost…

The fact that there are problems to solve doesn't meant that we should just not have the thing. What happens if I give a street artist 5 pounds to draw my picture and then he flatly refuses? What happens if someone mugs me on the street and steals 100 pounds from me? Should we not have cash at all because of these two problems, and others?

The problems are already solved with the current financial system. That's the point.

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

#158

Post by ObserverNeutral »

casi18 wrote: post #155
ObserverNeutral wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stuff doesn't scale. The 99% is represented by the regular normie citizen who likes intermediaries because they don't want the responsibility. The legacy financial system with intermediaries didn't emerge from some evil dictators pushing it onto the world. It spurred from the market desires, and the market is made up of the regular normie citizens AKA the 99% Despite what the headlines say, the 99% as a whole co…

Maybe it doesnt scale? lets try it. Maybe 99% of people dont want to use it? Cool, lets try it. We don't have to be 100% better, we have to be 0.1% better. I think that is absolutely in reach. I think that will be transformational for many. It will not bring us utopia, it might have bad side effects, hopefully the good outweighs the bad. And is this not spurred from market desires too? How do we know the difference b…

I get what you say.

But I think you are projecting yourself onto the regular citizen.

The thing which up to now the crypto world has managed to capture about the regular citizen is its fear of inflation and strong preference for deflation which allows him to increase his net worth without doing any work, just by sheer deflationary force baked in the protocol.

From a purely financial return standpoint: If DeFi/DAO/Eth is what the internet was back in the days, then it's IRC.

IRC didn't make any money. Facebook which is the dictionary definition of tired and not fun...well it will smash the record as the fastest Company from 0 to 1T.

So the equivalent to that would be betting on the Bank which decides to make Buterin the CEO or the maybe a new properly regulated fintech startup which wears the mantle of DeFi and the PR of Eth, but it's really an old school intermediary.

I get what you are saying about fun, but fun and finances shouldn't be mixed, in my opinion. Because you'll never know what other people who are not yourself would consider fun and if they'd jump on board to legitimize the community and have the token/stock you invested in appreciate

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

#159

Post by throwaway3699 »

jaredtn wrote: post #152
throwaway3699 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a tiny amount of money. Or are you going to listen to a million songs for £1? It's still reasonable to batch a few hundred listens for a small transaction every month.

The parent comment was about enabling micropayments, not the proper price for a song. Forest for the trees...

I guess I'm more wondering what possible value such a tiny micropayment could be. There's no conceivable business that would charge in such small increments. Even an average ad impression is more than a penny.

In fact, things are heading the other way, with "micro"-transactions in mainstream games sometimes exceeding the price of the game itself.

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

#160

Post by bun_at_work »

olalonde wrote: post #140
lottin wrote: post #46

Not sure if direct electronic payments without intermediaries are all that useful. How are disputes going to be dealt with?

Same as with cash payments or bank transfers today.

What? The bank is the intermediary, right?

For cash payments, is there good dispute handling? It's terrible, right? And most people who are robbed of their cash don't get it back, right?

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