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FedNow Is Live

federalreserve.gov

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Re: FedNow Is Live

#111
post #4

My concern is that this is a trial run for an official CBDC that will eventually replace cash.

What is it about CBDCs you find concerning compared to cash?

Cash can be spent without being monitored or blocked.

A recent example of how this might be relevant is with the protests in Canada that lead to the freezing of the protesters’ bank accounts by the government. While I don’t agree with the protesters, the idea of the government freezing their accounts is alarming. After seeing such control exercised, it’s hard to be excited about a cashless society.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree I'm more concerned about Silicon valley tech bros than my own government. I can vote for Parliament I can't vote for PayPal's board of directors.

PayPal doesn’t have a military and doesn’t extract taxes from you though.

If your government's military wanted to oppress you, PayPal wouldn't protect you from the consequences. No payment system ever conceived by even the stanchest technoanarchist is immune to bullets.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>replace cash That is the most important concern. Not even crypto can beat cash for convenience and anonymity. But having a way to transfer money outside of large corporations and instead through a government regulated service is a good thing.

It makes me question why we allow government to be in charge of our money, and the price of money (interest rate meddling by govt contractor federalreserve). I suppose we grow up with it and don't question it.

Go ahead and question it. What do you think is a reasonable alternative? Actually game it out.

Money wasn’t always the sole dominion of government. There is a reason we’ve ended up at this point. I find it to be entirely reasonable.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#114
post #5

Here we go. CBDCs are next, and also national Digital IDs. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRSzNTp2ko Real ID + needing it to browse anything on the Internet: https://community.qbix.com/t/the-coming-war-on-end-to-end-en... From what I see people on HN writing, by and large they downplay the risks of these as well as AI. Or alternately seem to suggest that CBDCs and national IDs are not coming, and that it’s a conspira…

US attitude towards national IDs is amusing, lol

It's also wildly inconsistent. The same political factions (vs individuals) that complain about Real ID also complain endlessly about fake ID. They complain about illegal voting, but also support the drive to withdraw their states from ERIC, which has done a good job in detecting illegal voting. Basically they're sometimes against solutions because their complaints infrastructure generates a reliable stream of political and financial capital from the credulous.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#115
post #84
post #10

I'm glad the US is finally catching up the rest of the world...India already has the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) [0]. Additionally, I think fears of this turning into a CBDC are overblown. Banks already have to settle transactions between banks through reserve transfers via the Fed...this will just help automate that process so we can send money from bank account to bank account. Like a Zelle or Venmo, but gover…

> India already has the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) [0]. Additionally, I think fears of this turning into a CBDC are overblown. Yet, India is already working on E-RUPI [0] which is a CBDC on top of UPI by the Reserve Bank of India, also shown in the same Wikipedia link you just used. Eventually, FedNow will just be the rails for a US dollar CBDC. The next time a protest happens in India after their government do…

> Eventually, FedNow will just be the rails for a US dollar CBDC

This is unfounded. FedNow is a faster classical payment rail. CBDCs involve the central bank taking on a customer-facing role. The Fed has no desire, nor frankly basis in law, to do that. The only reason the two are linked is crypto (a) prompted the first serious discussion about American payments modernization and (b) promoters are using it as a thread by which to hang onto a dream of mainstream crypto.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#116

Is there going to be a universal SDK / API we can use with this? This would cut alot of middle companies out of the payments industry (or at least put pressure on lowering fees). That would be a huge win. Wish we could do the same for the credit card companies. Would be great if the Federal Government could intervene in some way to have Visa / Mastercard / American Express / Discover use the same API interface for pa…

> Is there going to be a universal SDK / API we can use with this? There is probably a neobank opportunity in providing this. FedNow is, reasonably, administered by banks. (The Fed doesn't want to provide end-user customer service nor incur liability for fraud.)

Right. I suppose that makes sense. I’m thinking about ease of startup costs for institutions that want to use it financially. The Fed would need to support that anyway. Perhaps by not limiting a qualifying institution to just banks but also opening up access to financial service firms would be enough. They could just have some sort of fair priced qualifying program that a company has to maintain to access it or something

Re: FedNow Is Live

#118
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see government IDs be available as a form of auth on the internet. It would open up the possibility of real-person communities with fewer bots and trolls. Similarly with digital payments, I'd much rather trust the government with that than some rando cryptobro of the week. There is nothing extreme about this. The government already does both functions in the analog world. It's about time they caught u…

My concern with digital payments is the elimination of cash. Having the ability to transfer value without it being monitored or blocked is an exceptionally useful property of paper money.

Well, it's still possible with barter goods, just a lot harder. Isn't there a cryptocurrency that's actually private too? (I know Bitcoin is not)

Re: FedNow Is Live

#119
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to see government IDs be available as a form of auth on the internet. It would open up the possibility of real-person communities with fewer bots and trolls. Similarly with digital payments, I'd much rather trust the government with that than some rando cryptobro of the week. There is nothing extreme about this. The government already does both functions in the analog world. It's about time they caught u…

> I would love to see government IDs be available as a form of auth on the internet This kind of already exists: https://login.gov I have to use this to login to the VA.

It'd certainly be interesting if they opened it up so third-parties could use it for authentication.

Re: FedNow Is Live

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree I'm more concerned about Silicon valley tech bros than my own government. I can vote for Parliament I can't vote for PayPal's board of directors.

Governments are far harder to remove than tech firms. You may be able to ditch Google, but there's only one government in your country. And "democracy" doesn't prevent state surveillance. Most politicians back it, so voting differently makes little difference. Labour and the Conservatives support the Online Safety Bill, the Patriot Act was bipartisan, and voters have very little control over the EU and can’t stop Cha…

> Governments are far harder to remove than tech firms. You may be able to ditch Google

Ditching Google is not the same thing as removing Google from governance of your life, though. I don't use Google search, but I am sure they know who I am and sell that data to anyone who wants it, including government agencies which can't legally obtain that data on their own due (ostensibly) to citizen oversight.

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