This is a thoughtful treatment of some of the issues. I worked on digital identity in govt, and sovereign identity is considered seriously there. The concepts in the article force the question of what things like security, dystopian, and scalable mean, among others. If I were to articulate the gap in perspectives, it would be that it is between the engineering view of solving problems (e.g. Vitalik's "soul bound toke…
This is probably one of the most interesting comments I’ve ever read. Can you share more details about the digital identity and currency product you were working on and for which government was it intended for?
However, what I can say is that engineers are not lawyers, so we tend not to understand the regulatory systems in place, and the lawyers you would need to untangle this stuff aren't technologists. That's changing post-covid, where western governments in general are taking a "so sue me," approach to imposing technology and mandates over top of privacy norms and regulations, and there is a young generation of lawyers who grew up online (and with cryptocurrency, bitcoin is 11 years old now) who can pick up things like protocols.
The vaccine passport system and covax was quite a gambit as it was an international digital id scheme intended to subsume other efforts that had stronger technical requirements. The central bank digital currency (CBDC) stuff we're hearing about now is an artifact of a few related factors, but what CBDCs are really going to look like in my opinion is the CUC in cuba, or a kind of government/public sector scrip, or the peso in argentina or venezuela that has an official dollar peg and price controls, but there's a huge grey market for USD. Reality is from a state perspective, power is zero sum and human suffering is just managable, and the technology changes of the last two decades have sidelined government as an authority, so they're all trying to reassert themselves. It's going to look clumsy and dumb and it will destroy a lot of wealth and value, but they don't care so long as they think they have secured the reins.
Of course, nobody ever secures the reins so the demand for authority is infinite, but that doesn't stop anyone from trying. Economists, politicians and so-called experts who tell you they can manage an economy don't tell you the part where they run it in to the ground and rule over the ashes, as once you give them secured control, it doesn't matter how well it works. Their promises and arguments are to persuade you to give in to them, because their logic reduces to, if we have power, what do we need your consent and approval for?
If I were hedging, I would figure out what the grey market commodities will be in response to a CBDC that doesn't pass the H&B test I described above. Precedents I would reference would be times in history where govts declare a "bank holiday" and replace bank deposits with treasury bills, or seize deposits of FX and reserve currencies and "buy" them from citizens with the new pegged currency with greater national controls.
The scenario I speculate about is NZ/AU/CAN use a long weekend or "banking system outage," to replace citizen cash deposits with the new CBDC with the flick of a switch and the stroke of a pen, similar to India banning certain cash denominations and taking high denomination bills out of circulation. Assets that facilitate capital flight out of these places will be at a premium, imo. (good news for the art, wine, jewelry, collectables, precious metals, equine, super cars, and other portable alternative asset markets, imo. The big auction houses will probably do well this year.)
Dark stuff, but you spend enough time in security, and everything is within a degree or two of these historic sea changes.