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

101–110 of 162 posts

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

#101

Post by smolder »

potamic wrote: post #50
Ekaros wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Friction in a process can be an amazing deterrent and prevents you from abusing power en masse. Whenever there is a cost to doing something, it demands prudence.

I wish this was more widely understood. It's relevant when talking about the danger of ubiquitous/dragnet surveillance; it's relevant to our habits around communication, and consumption of media. Friction is a key determining factor in human behavior.

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

#102

Post by TEP_Kim_Il_Sung »

arcticbull wrote: post #89
germandiago wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question should be: with the track record of wild debt countries are showing, the Twitter leaked mails shpwing political control behind and the raise in taxes, what makes you think they will do something good? Besides that: why should I put my effort at the management of people I do not trust so that they do what they deem appropriate without paying for their mistakes? Am I his slave or something?

> Besides that: why should I put my effort at the management of people I do not trust so that they do what they deem appropriate without paying for their mistakes? Am I his slave or something? Generally you are either directly or indirectly their elector so they are in fact accountable to you. But yeah, that's kind of how democracy works. I'm personally only supportive of privacy-preserving CBDCs like the Rohan Grey…

The Twitter files had a lot to say to that response too...

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

#103

Post by girishso »

PeterisP wrote: post #60
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The goal of that campaign was not to change which denominations are in circulation, but rather quite explicitly to confiscate unaccounted-for wealth stored as piles of cash - that's why there were all kinds of quantity limits, and also the time limit to ensure that those who had a lot of such cash could not effectively launder most of it.

In spite of all that, more than 98% of the demonetized bills made it back to the banks.

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

#104

Post by ssivark »

fractalb wrote: post #99
ssivark wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link -- it is a nice discussion, and contains pointers to interesting content that I wasn't aware of. (likewise, for the sibling comment with links about mBridge) I appreciate the privacy concerns, but for anyone reading, the tradeoffs have a completely different meaning in the Indian context. 1. A fraction of the Indian populace is so poor that the cost of operating a cash economy (printing currency,…

> 1. A fraction of the Indian populace is so poor that the cost of operating a cash economy (printing currency, transporting it securely, stocking and operating ATMS and bank branches) might prove forbiddingly expensive to service rural areas -- leading to financial exclusion. So, for them, digital infrastructure (which reduces cost of transacting) is a matter of life support, rather than the luxury that it is in the…

> So poor, but well-off for paying for mobile phones/laptops and internet

Yup — physical infrastructure is often mind-bogglingly expensive in both capex and opex (and implicitly subsidized in developed countries, so it appears cheap).

> educated enough to understand the app interface/language?

They might be illiterate, but they’re not stupid. As humans, they’re perfectly capable of learning (especially social learning) when it’s important to them.

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

#105

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

blackoil wrote: post #20
ssivark wrote: 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.

Paper money still has a very important role, because it can't simply be deleted from your account.

That's important, because central banks are considering negative interest rate policy, which would mean your bank account would drop by a percentage each month. This would drive people to spend or invest their money, supporting consumption and inflating asset prices.

The reason they can't do that right now is because many people would withdraw their funds and hold cash. That option needs to be removed for negative interest rate policy to be broadly implemented.

(There are a few places, like Europe, where interest rates already went negative, but only slightly and it only applied to institutions like banks).

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

#106

Post by cuteboy19 »

fractalb wrote: post #99
ssivark wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link -- it is a nice discussion, and contains pointers to interesting content that I wasn't aware of. (likewise, for the sibling comment with links about mBridge) I appreciate the privacy concerns, but for anyone reading, the tradeoffs have a completely different meaning in the Indian context. 1. A fraction of the Indian populace is so poor that the cost of operating a cash economy (printing currency,…

> 1. A fraction of the Indian populace is so poor that the cost of operating a cash economy (printing currency, transporting it securely, stocking and operating ATMS and bank branches) might prove forbiddingly expensive to service rural areas -- leading to financial exclusion. So, for them, digital infrastructure (which reduces cost of transacting) is a matter of life support, rather than the luxury that it is in the…

Yes! Second hand mobiles are extremely cheap and most people do know how to operate one. The UI is quite easy actually

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

#107

Post by influxmoment »

lottin wrote: post #47
influxmoment wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They get money to make some software but clearly aren't proponents of a totalitarian system

I don't know about totalitarian systems. They are involved with CBDCs. How do you know they aren't proponents of CBDCs?

Because CBDC are the complete opposite of bitcoin philosophy. Bitcoin is about personal freedom and separating state and money. CBDC is about centralised govt control and monitoring

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

#108

Post by xwolfi »

germandiago wrote: post #93
rhaway84773 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because in the context of India the digitization of money and centralization of data has been a massive boon to the people. For example, with the creation of a national identification number (which, thanks to the initial poor security measures has already been hacked), government welfare schemes which involved the distribution of money to people now actually results in the poor benefitting from them, since the money…

I get your point and things are nuanced depending on the situation. But the amount of control this tracking can create is potentially evil. We have to be careful with this. I'd rather work for less and keep control than doing this. But what this is going to generate is massive govt. control. Worse than before. Not telling about India specifics though.

But, India is so far behind, it may need a little bit of "evil" for a little while to clean up all the layers of intermediary corruption before getting better.

It's already awful to live there for a large part of the population, and they have so little, that the government really has no use tracking them: yes, they re starving, going to work for $5 a month, and sleeping... like, okay they knew that already, maybe having some sort of better grasp on the currency flow could help direct it better.

"Working for less" in India is not the same as in California, just yet.

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

#109

Post by cuteboy19 »

reactspa wrote: post #91

One of the greatest strengths that both China and India have is that the West will never understand them. The West will think they understand them. They will assume they understand them. They will be sure they understand them. But they will never understand them. Hence the implication in the headline (well-written headline, by the way), that if nobody else uses it, India is wasting its time. The same people said abou…

> The same people said about UPI (Modi's digital payments push)

It enrages me how quickly the opposition memory holed its nonsense criticism of UPI when it was first launched. And now they are doing the same thing to erupee

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

#110

Post by philwelch »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #105
blackoil wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Paper money still has a very important role, because it can't simply be deleted from your account. That's important, because central banks are considering negative interest rate policy, which would mean your bank account would drop by a percentage each month. This would drive people to spend or invest their money, supporting consumption and inflating asset prices. The reason they can't do that right now is because ma…

That’s horrifying and I have a hard time imagining that sort of thing happening in any functional democracy.
Post reply on HN