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Nobody’s using CBDCs – India’s piloting one anyway

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Re: Nobody’s using CBDCs – India’s piloting one anyway

#12
It's surprising to see that there are liberal proponents of this. You don't have to be a raging libertarian to see the risks of unlocking this much financial reach for governments. We (in the West) may now mostly live under reasonable governments, but there's obviously no guarantee that this won't change (including towards your ), and implementing social credit score systems and other dystopian things would be much easier under CBDC than it currently is?

Re: Nobody’s using CBDCs – India’s piloting one anyway

#14
post #12

It's surprising to see that there are liberal proponents of this. You don't have to be a raging libertarian to see the risks of unlocking this much financial reach for governments. We (in the West) may now mostly live under reasonable governments, but there's obviously no guarantee that this won't change (including towards your ), and implementing social credit score systems and other dystopian things would be much e…

Absolutely. If it remains an alternative, it's fine. But if they try to force out physical cash completely in favor of CBDCs, you better be wary.

Re: Nobody’s using CBDCs – India’s piloting one anyway

#16
Remind me about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis...

> On 8 November 2016, the Government of India announced the demonetisation of all ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes

> Several people were reported to have died from standing in queues for hours to exchange their demonetised banknotes.[180][181][182][183][184][185] Deaths were also attributed to lack of medical help due to refusal of demonetised banknotes by hospitals.[186][187][188]

> The exchange of banknotes was stopped completely on 25 November, although the government had previously stated that the volume of exchange would be increased after that date.

> The push for digital payments was one of the stated intentions of demonetisation.

So if someone missed this 17 days or has not managed to exchange their funds - then they would lost all their cash they were holding using demonetized banknotes.

Re: Nobody’s using CBDCs – India’s piloting one anyway

#17

Cashless societies terrify me. So easy to control people when you can decide what and with whom they can transact with.

Any good implementation of a central bank digital currency should have some anonymity handling, or it's not really a good cash replacement (Unless the goal all along was monitoring, which of course will be the case in some countries). Being able to spend $500 on something without anyone knowing is important. As is not beig able to launder $5M without anyone noticing. "Tomatoes, not diamonds" is the key feature here.

Re: Nobody’s using CBDCs – India’s piloting one anyway

#18
post #12

It's surprising to see that there are liberal proponents of this. You don't have to be a raging libertarian to see the risks of unlocking this much financial reach for governments. We (in the West) may now mostly live under reasonable governments, but there's obviously no guarantee that this won't change (including towards your ), and implementing social credit score systems and other dystopian things would be much e…

I never understood this argument. It is not like governments can't tell the banks and payment processor not to accept payments or freeze all funds of certain people. Courts can already order automatic confiscation in cases like bankruptcies and so on.

Re: Nobody’s using CBDCs – India’s piloting one anyway

#19

Remind me about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis... > On 8 November 2016, the Government of India announced the demonetisation of all ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes > Several people were reported to have died from standing in queues for hours to exchange their demonetised banknotes.[180][181][182][183][184][185] Deaths were also attributed to lack of medical help due to refusal of demonetised b…

They only had 17 days? That's ridiculous; normally they would just stop printing them and have them be taken out of rotation in a natural fashion (e.g. bank deposits, but that assumes cash is eventually deposited and converted to a number in a bank account).

Re: Nobody’s using CBDCs – India’s piloting one anyway

#20
post #9

Meh. The article expends zero effort in actually engaging with the Reserve Bank of India's motivations or the CBDC design [1], and is filled with shallow comments about the roll-out in other countries. This is a very important topic as it has the potential to reshape banking/economics on the timescale of decades. For a good down-to-earth understanding of "layer 1" -vs- "layer 2" money, refer the following post [2]. I…

Paper money is a small percentage of total money, and a much smaller percentage in terms of actual transactions. Most of the money is already digital.
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