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Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

reuters.com

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Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#81

Post by alchemist1e9 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? What a strange characterization. Blockchains, some, are clearly decentralized and permission-less. US banking system is highly regulated and permission-ed. Are you standing by your statement with a serious face? https://www.occ.gov/about/who-we-are/index-who-we-are.html

> standing by your statement with a serious face? Yes. There is no database of who has how much in every account. Even with bank and account number, lookup is nontrivial. Blockchains present a single record of everyone’s wallets, all the time. (Even politically, Bitcoin is an oligopoly of miners. Their controlling persons may number fewer than half of the Congress. Proof of Stake, meanwhile, is explicitly rule by the…

Your first point refers to to the perceived lack of privacy features of Bitcoin. I’ll mention that there are many working solutions to that and Litecoin has taken that even further already with MWEB and it’s quite conceivable this will eventually be added to Bitcoin, however even with segwit and taproot, Bitcoin at L2 can be used with high levels of privacy and will be. So that makes your observation about on chain address balances being public not so relevant.

In regards to your point that the current US banking system has an franchised type credit creation model and that could be viewed as decentralized. First I’m a bit confused as we are discussing CBDCs which are explicitly an attempt to make the system more centralized. But irregardless, it still makes no sense, because to move money between US banks, the systems involved flow through the Fed and the messages include extensive identifying meta data. Additionally all transfer information and account balances can be requested by federal authorities without warrants, their is no legal expectation of privacy in regards to your banking transactions. So it really doesn’t make a lot of sense to call this decentralized simply based on the franchised style credit creation model, while simultaneously discussing transaction privacy.

Lastly, on miner oligarchy and lack of decentralization. Your statements are actually pure misinformation. Mining pools are ephemeral relationships amongst actual miners, actual operators are highly decentralized and global. The Bitcoin node network is the most decentralized network that exists.

I don’t believe you actually understand the topic as you claim to.

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#82

Post by alchemist1e9 »

worik wrote: post #57

I have read all the comments here (always a pleasure) People's greatest fear seems to be control by the state I fear that too, but I fear private power more. Private power is accountable to none but the owners. Where I live the state can be held politically accountable. It is an imperfect system, and we the people are forever contesting control of the state with private power, but we have agency in that struggle Priv…

> People's greatest fear seems to be control by the state > I fear that too, but I fear private power more.

Are there a lot of examples in history of private power controlling large populations that you could share?

Oddly my recollection of history seems to include just a few of governments controlling and mass murdering populations but I’m struggling on the private power ones a bit …

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#83

Post by JumpCrisscross »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #81
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> standing by your statement with a serious face? Yes. There is no database of who has how much in every account. Even with bank and account number, lookup is nontrivial. Blockchains present a single record of everyone’s wallets, all the time. (Even politically, Bitcoin is an oligopoly of miners. Their controlling persons may number fewer than half of the Congress. Proof of Stake, meanwhile, is explicitly rule by the…

Your first point refers to to the perceived lack of privacy features of Bitcoin. I’ll mention that there are many working solutions to that and Litecoin has taken that even further already with MWEB and it’s quite conceivable this will eventually be added to Bitcoin, however even with segwit and taproot, Bitcoin at L2 can be used with high levels of privacy and will be. So that makes your observation about on chain a…

> observation about on chain address balances being public not so relevant

Not public. Centralised.

> to move money between US banks, the systems involved flow through the Fed and the messages include extensive identifying meta data

No, it doesn’t. When I transfer funds from UBS to JPMorgan, UBS deducts my account and adds money to JPMorgan’s account at UBS. (Exceptions including cheques and wires.)

> transfer information and account balances can be requested by federal authorities without warrants

This hasn’t been true since at least 1978 [1].

> Mining pools are ephemeral relationships amongst actual miners

Mining control is highly concentrated [2]. Whether they’re in pools or acting alone is irrelevant to the question of concentration of governance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Financial_Privacy_Act

[2] https://www.nber.org/papers/w29396

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#84

Post by 2Crisp »

vagabund wrote: post #70
2Crisp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. The Laffer curve is about taxable income elasticity. It says nothing about the practical challenge of tracking taxes owed and actually collecting them in a cash based system as the parent was suggesting

Is tax avoidance/evasion not a part of taxable income elasticity? My understanding was that it is

I suppose it could be fine to include it that way... Ie. A cash based world where tax evasion is harder to detect would have higher elasticity of taxable income. It's also true that the model does not require any tax evasion at all.

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#85

Post by alchemist1e9 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first point refers to to the perceived lack of privacy features of Bitcoin. I’ll mention that there are many working solutions to that and Litecoin has taken that even further already with MWEB and it’s quite conceivable this will eventually be added to Bitcoin, however even with segwit and taproot, Bitcoin at L2 can be used with high levels of privacy and will be. So that makes your observation about on chain a…

> observation about on chain address balances being public not so relevant Not public. Centralised. > to move money between US banks, the systems involved flow through the Fed and the messages include extensive identifying meta data No, it doesn’t. When I transfer funds from UBS to JPMorgan, UBS deducts my account and adds money to JPMorgan’s account at UBS. (Exceptions including cheques and wires.) > transfer inform…

Significant US domestic bank transfers are most done by a combination of Fedwire and FedACH.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedwire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedACH

The raw messages include specific recipient and sender identifying fields. All those messages are monitored and stored by multiple federal agencies, including intelligence agencies.

So NO your transfer from UBS to JOMorgan is not handled operationally as you imply other that obviously the Fed clearing account balances belong to each of the participant bank. However the actual recorded and available messages include names and details of sender and receiver!

(edit) The privacy act you refer was altered by the Patriot act and is no longer the case. Your financial records are property of the bank and the government can inspect them at anytime without any notification under Patriot act. It took me a few minutes to reconcile understanding of what actually occurs being in contradiction to the link you provided to the Privacy law, which is as I say, no longer relevant.

As for mining operator centralization if I can get access to the nber paper without registering (not on sci-hub unfortunately) I’d read it and have a comment. My guess is it was likely a result of flawed analysis and misunderstanding of mining pool payouts.

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#86

Post by JumpCrisscross »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #85
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> observation about on chain address balances being public not so relevant Not public. Centralised. > to move money between US banks, the systems involved flow through the Fed and the messages include extensive identifying meta data No, it doesn’t. When I transfer funds from UBS to JPMorgan, UBS deducts my account and adds money to JPMorgan’s account at UBS. (Exceptions including cheques and wires.) > transfer inform…

Significant US domestic bank transfers are most done by a combination of Fedwire and FedACH. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedwire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedACH The raw messages include specific recipient and sender identifying fields. All those messages are monitored and stored by multiple federal agencies, including intelligence agencies. So NO your transfer from UBS to JOMorgan is not handled operationally…

> Significant US domestic bank transfers are most done by a combination of Fedwire and FedACH

Sure. Nobody claimed no transfers flow through the Fed.

You’re ignoring CHIPS, which does over two thirds the volume of Fedwire, as well the entire consumer payment system. Even ignoring Eurodollars, most dollar payments do not flow through the Fed. This is Exhibit A for a CBDC.

> financial records are property of the bank and the government can inspect them at anytime without any notification under Patriot act

The FBI always had an NSL carve-out. The PATRIOT Act expanded it. But e.g. the SEC or State of California can’t pull your bank records without court approval. That’s because of the RFPA (which explicitly made bank records the bank’s property).

> it was likely a result of flawed analysis and misunderstanding of mining pool payouts

Of course it was.

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#87

Post by alchemist1e9 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #86
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significant US domestic bank transfers are most done by a combination of Fedwire and FedACH. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedwire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedACH The raw messages include specific recipient and sender identifying fields. All those messages are monitored and stored by multiple federal agencies, including intelligence agencies. So NO your transfer from UBS to JOMorgan is not handled operationally…

> Significant US domestic bank transfers are most done by a combination of Fedwire and FedACH Sure. Nobody claimed no transfers flow through the Fed. You’re ignoring CHIPS, which does over two thirds the volume of Fedwire, as well the entire consumer payment system. Even ignoring Eurodollars, most dollar payments do not flow through the Fed. This is Exhibit A for a CBDC. > financial records are property of the bank a…

I can tell you are arguing in bad faith now because first you refer to a 1978 privacy law which is irrelevant and not applicable, but additionally when I mention Patriot (intentionally instead of AML 2020) you admit Patriot changes it and talk about SEC and State of California, which for political dissidents would be irrelevant. However you now will perhaps even admit that after 2020 AML there is zero privacy in US banking system even in the CHIPs clearinghouse you hold up.

I’m not sure what to make of this discussion. Do you perhaps have a vested interest in the current financial system and establishment which motivates the presentation of information in such a biased approach?

For Bitcoin miners there are many ways to see that the system is decentralized and distributed. When China interferes with Chinese miners we see hardware and hashing migrate locations. We see numerous examples of energy arbitrage.

Here is a direct link to that paper. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29396/w293...

I will read it tomorrow and reply again to your above comment. It’s extremely likely they have no idea what they are saying.

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#88

Post by JumpCrisscross »

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #87
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Significant US domestic bank transfers are most done by a combination of Fedwire and FedACH Sure. Nobody claimed no transfers flow through the Fed. You’re ignoring CHIPS, which does over two thirds the volume of Fedwire, as well the entire consumer payment system. Even ignoring Eurodollars, most dollar payments do not flow through the Fed. This is Exhibit A for a CBDC. > financial records are property of the bank a…

I can tell you are arguing in bad faith now because first you refer to a 1978 privacy law which is irrelevant and not applicable, but additionally when I mention Patriot (intentionally instead of AML 2020) you admit Patriot changes it and talk about SEC and State of California, which for political dissidents would be irrelevant. However you now will perhaps even admit that after 2020 AML there is zero privacy in US b…

> you refer to a 1978 privacy law which is irrelevant and not applicable

This is wrong. Prior to the RFPA, there were no federal legal protections for these records. The IRS and SEC could request records without the customer’s or a judge’s permission. After, including now, they can’t. That’s far from irrelevant.

> you now will perhaps even admit that after 2020 AML there is zero privacy in US banking system

Still a straw man. Nobody said the American banking system is private for political dissidents. Just that it’s decentralised. Bitcoin, by having a single, centralised ledger, is not.

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#89

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gruez wrote: post #23
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #22

Crypto was always mis-marketed as decentralised. It’s not. The American banking system is decentralised. Credit is created and balances maintained at the edges. Blockchain is centralised. This brings many efficiencies. But it also empowers those at the centre.

>Blockchain is centralised. You lost me here. What exactly about "blockchain" is centralized? The fact that there's a central ledger?

> that there's a central ledger?

Yes. There is no central ledger for the American banking system.

There is a super-powered federal government. But the network’s topology is fundamentally decentralised.

Re: Bank of England and Treasury think UK is 'likely' to need digital currency

#90

Post by phendrenad2 »

lockhouse wrote: post #8

I 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?

You seem to be supposing that the digital pound will replace the physical pound. Do you have any evidence to back that up?
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