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US Digital Currency

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: US Digital Currency

#11

Post by dangero »

The amount of sweeping reform the US Gov would need to overcome in order to take action on this is pretty massive. Seems like it would not happen unless they felt their currency was threatened by digital currencies. Then they might move faster.

If they did do this tomorrow, it would instantly become the top market cap cryptocurrency in the world.

The hardest part about cryptocurrency is that the coin is only as good as the community around it including the holders. Fair distribution is the one feature that has been thus far unachievable and it would really require usage of a mandated government ID database. That would be the US Gov coin advantage beyond branding and enforcement weapons.

Re: US Digital Currency

#13

Post by stale2002 »

tpfour wrote: post #6

What is this... jotting down some notes? I guess this will generate discussion because Sam wrote it, but it is probably one of the most boring and banal ideas in the space. And the exposition is very... shallow to say the least. "A tricky part of this would be how to balance letting the network have control over itself and letting the government have some special degree of input on ‘monetary policy’. It’s certainly o…

"The "government" can't "arbitrarily inflate the currency"."

The US government can literally do this. They can print as much money as they feel like. It would be 'dumb' for sure, but the US treasury is indeed allowed to do this.

There was even talks of solving the national debt crisis by having Obama create a trillion dollar coin a couple years ago.

Re: US Digital Currency

#14

Post by jasode »

>Ideally the initial coins would be evenly distributed to US citizens and taxpayers— [...] The government can likely create a lot of de novo wealth for its citizens in the process.

This USDC proposal seems to reiterate the same themes as a previous blog post "American Equity".[1]

>, but I think the network needs to be mostly in charge (e.g., the government couldn’t be allowed to arbitrarily inflate the currency when it wanted to).

I doubt the USA government or any other modern government with fiat money would agree to this. Inflating currency is a hidden way to spend money it doesn't have. E.g. since Social Security payments are denominated in US Dollars, the govt can _nominally_ keep its payment promises by printing more USD.

Sure, the buying power of each USD for each SS recipient is severely reduced in that scenario but most citizens don't understand nominal dollars vs real buying power and therefore, it's a win-win for the govt.

A cryptocurrency that doesn't allow government flexibility to spend money that it doesn't have will have monumental political hurdles.

[1] http://blog.samaltman.com/american-equity

Re: US Digital Currency

#15

Post by vinhboy »

> The current practices seem to be for governments to mostly ignore cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency enthusiasts to mostly ignore government

To me this is the biggest falsehood about cryptocurrency. There is virtually no anonymity in cryptocurrency. You can't do anything with cryptocurrency without verifying your ID. It is now ubiquitous to provide your driver license and social security on every reputable exchange.

I honestly find it more restrictive to use cryptocurrency than the few dollars I have in my pocket. I can take it outside and buy some candy in the alley without anyone having a record of it. Can't do that with cryptocurrency.

The only way to get around this is to mine your own coins. However, mining is impossible for individuals because of the mining farms.

Re: US Digital Currency

#16

Post by davebryand »

"The US government could decide to treat USDC as a second legal currency, which would be hugely powerful."

I'd love for Sam to dig deeply into The Federal Reserve System and write about this topic with that knowledge.

[EDIT]: The more I think about this the more surprised I find myself. Sam assumes that the United States just can spin up a competitive currency to the Federal Reserve Note. This completely misunderstands the nature of the matrix and its power structure. For any seekers out there, following this rabbit hole is a fun romp on the way to spiritual awakening.

Re: US Digital Currency

#17

Post by skorbenko »

Russia is planning something like this, although the coin is far from reality. Venezuela has already put the coin out there, and it is called El Petro. From the above we can see that some countries are working on this already. However, as ErikAugust noticed, the thought is cringe worthy to the Bitcoin/crypto loyalists.

Re: US Digital Currency

#18

Post by whitepoplar »

jasode wrote: post #14

>Ideally the initial coins would be evenly distributed to US citizens and taxpayers— [...] The government can likely create a lot of de novo wealth for its citizens in the process. This USDC proposal seems to reiterate the same themes as a previous blog post "American Equity".[1] >, but I think the network needs to be mostly in charge (e.g., the government couldn’t be allowed to arbitrarily inflate the currency when…

Social Security in the U.S. is inflation-adjusted.

Re: US Digital Currency

#19

Post by stale2002 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #10

I think we'll get viable cryptocurrencies when the people designing them understand the basic and well-known economics of how money works; AND, when basic scalability problems are solved. It's well-known that deflationary currencies do not work. That is a severe problem that must be solved before cryptocurrency is viable. Limiting the total number of coins means that the currency is deflationary. Furthermore, our cur…

> It's well-known that deflationary currencies do not work.

Deflationary currencies have worked out fine for literally thousand of years.

Inflationary currencies are a modern concept, with their own advantages AND disadvantages.

I'm surprised this is such a sticking point for people, and that they think the system will literally collapse, when we have centuries of history proving otherwise.

> It's also well-known that blockchain can't scale to handle the volume of transactions that the Visa network handles

Visa level only requires gigabyte level blocks. And that is well within the realm of what many cryptocurrencies are trying to accomplish.

Not Bitcoin core, though, obviously.

Blockchains can scale arbitrarily. They come with some disadvantages, for sure. But at visa levels, they are disadvantages of a certain scale, that matter to people who care about decentralization, to an insanely high degree.

For the vast majority of people, who are willing so compromise very slightly on matters of trust and decentralization, visa scale blockchains work fine.

Re: US Digital Currency

#20

Post by thiscatis »

vinhboy wrote: post #15

> The current practices seem to be for governments to mostly ignore cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency enthusiasts to mostly ignore government To me this is the biggest falsehood about cryptocurrency. There is virtually no anonymity in cryptocurrency. You can't do anything with cryptocurrency without verifying your ID. It is now ubiquitous to provide your driver license and social security on every reputable exchange.…

That's not correct. You are talking about fiat ramps (to get "old" money in or out). If you mine or stake and get awarded and just use it within the ecosystem there's no need for "id verification". So saying "You cannot do anything with cryptocurrency without verifying your ID" is an overgeneralisation of "You cannot exchange other fiat money for cryptocurrency or visa versa without verifying your id".
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