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Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
11–20 of 103 posts
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#12I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
I suppose ideally your money can’t be stolen? E.g., if someone hacks you or something similar, the government can invalidate that currency. Plus reduced money laundering, since it’s tracked, which theoretically reduces crime and makes it easier to track.
Personally I only see physical currency being deprecated over the next several decades, considering most people don’t really care about privacy anymore (including me, to be fair).
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#13I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
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Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#14I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
Not only that, they will have a much more fine grained inventory of things you own.
Convenience might be a personal advantage.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#15>need
I can see way they might want it, but unclear why it is specifically needed?
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#16We have one, it’s called the sterling
Seriously I don’t think I touched more than £50 in paper money since the start of the pandemic… everything is via debit / credit card or bank transfer
Even when my teenager owes me money he sends it to me via his banking app talking to mine via bluetooth
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#17I understand the advantages of this for the government. It will be much easier to track and control how we spend our money and ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes. What is the advantage for me as a citizen?
> ensure that we pay every last possible cent of taxes.
Is that a bad thing? (The end, not the means)
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#18Interesting topic but there’s not much in the article beyond the headline. The only given rationale is that the BoE might need to issue a digital currency or else “Big Tech” might end up “controlling money.” Perhaps there’s a better article with more insight, but from this alone I get the feeling this is may just be politicians creating pork for consultants.
I work in a sort of tangential field, and know a lot of people who are involved with digital currency related public policy. The governments motives for taking an interest in this are basically the exact opposite of the motives of decentralized digital currency proponents. Decentralized digital currency offers the potential for increased anonymity, and a lack of central control/regulation/oversight/ect…
Centralized digital currencies offer governments highly increased potential for surveillance, regulation and policing. They create the ability for the central authority to monitor and control the use of money in a far more fine grained manner than the existing financial systems do.
All of the use cases that I hear talked about are focused around these themes, with the threat of decentralized digital currencies undermining these capabilities motivating a lot of the interest.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#19We have one, it’s called the sterling Seriously I don’t think I touched more than £50 in paper money since the start of the pandemic… everything is via debit / credit card or bank transfer Even when my teenager owes me money he sends it to me via his banking app talking to mine via bluetooth
The point there being that the bank is the middleman not the government. Maybe the same thing given how incestuous things are sometimes.
Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency
#20Haha, love reading stories like this, considering all my past comments on the matter and the origin of bitcoin kept getting flagged