Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techmonitor.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 162 posts

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

#21

Post by FpUser »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

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

It is one thing to be connected when it augments things and provides lots of benefits. But instead of adding we are moving many vital services into digital always connected realm to the point where they will not function without Internet connection. One day it will blow big time in our faces. I mean we already have warnings here and there like recent ROGERS outage disabling phone services including 911 emergency calls.

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

#22

Post by Cthulhu_ »

alkonaut wrote: post #17
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

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.

That's the kicker; I don't believe there's any government that wants anonymous digital cash. If anything, they want to be the only ones that can track it.

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

#23

Post by FpUser »

m4rtink wrote: post #15
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

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

Well, with most salaries going to bank accounts it's half way there already, isn't it ?

Well you can still take cash out and hide it under the mattress ;)

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

#24

Post by danbruc »

Build the following and I will use it.

  - value pegged to some existing currency
  - unforgeable and easily verifiable, preferably offline
  - non-traceable, just like coins or banknotes without a serial number
  - usable offline and without third parties, just like handing over physical money

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

#25

Post by luckylion »

m4rtink wrote: post #15
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

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

Well, with most salaries going to bank accounts it's half way there already, isn't it ?

Especially since it's more common now to pay digitally and not get cash from the bank and then use it in every day shopping.

I've adopted it too when merchants strongly encouraged it during the lock downs, and it's just so easy, I've kept it. I do spend more, but I don't know if there's a causal relationship -- would handing over bank notes make me more aware of what and how much I'm buying?

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

#26

Post by chii »

matkoniecz wrote: post #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 b…

> So if someone missed this 17 days

this sort of shit is what makes a gov't a low trust gov't.

It exacerbates the informal economy - people would not want to pay taxes to fund such a govt, because they don't see that the gov't is running with their interest in mind (despite india being a so called democracy).

It was a poorly thought-out policy.

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

#27

Post by Ekaros »

m4rtink wrote: post #15
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

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

Well, with most salaries going to bank accounts it's half way there already, isn't it ?

Also if you think of payment flows. I would guess that less than a dozen operators on average in each country cover nearly all of payments. And top 3-4 likely vast majority.

For Europe I believe VISA+MC, SEPA and maybe one or two domestic solutions handle most of transactions.

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

#28

Post by eldenwrong »

Ekaros wrote: post #18
fab1an wrote: 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.

Does it require 1 click?

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

#29

Post by totalZero »

matkoniecz wrote: post #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 b…

> The BSE SENSEX and NIFTY 50 stock indices fell over 6 percent on the day after the announcement. The move reduced the country's industrial production and its GDP growth rate. It is estimated that 1.5 million jobs were lost.

Wow.

They should have gone back to the drawing board after seeing their announcement lop off a huge chunk of their equity market capitalization.

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

#30

Post by LearnProg17 »

danbruc wrote: post #24

Build the following and I will use it. - value pegged to some existing currency - unforgeable and easily verifiable, preferably offline - non-traceable, just like coins or banknotes without a serial number - usable offline and without third parties, just like handing over physical money

Non-traceablity defeats the purpose of a currency. Might as well trade in gold. For most transactions, physical money isn't really needed nor convenient.
Post reply on HN