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I'm lonely, and created a private CBDC

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I'm lonely, and created a private CBDC

#11

Post by WantonQuantum »

nealbozeman wrote: post #4

A tax is needed to raise the money for the UBI, and to keep the value and money supply stable. Income tax is unnecessary if you say money that's sitting doing nothing will be taxed out of the system (basically a waste tax). The whole system is being taxed away at 1% per month to pay for the UBI. If you spend, lend, or invest your money as soon as you get it, you never pay taxes. There's a neat equilibrium here. UBI i…

How do you identify me and stop me from claiming multiple UBIs?

If someone with no money benefits the most from UBI then my optimal strategy is to be as many people as possible, each with no money.

Re: I'm lonely, and created a private CBDC

#12

Post by scotty79 »

nealbozeman wrote: post #10
scotty79 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I propose progressive real estate tax to finance UBI. If you have a lot of property, it costs you more to pay the tax on it than it would cost if the ownership of those properties was split between many smaller owners. Obviously property owned by you includes properties owned by your subsiduaries so you can't fake-split ownership. This tax apart from financing UBI will encourage small real estate ownership and will c…

It's a private CBDC, so a private CBDC couldn't collect on property tax. Anyway, I'm considering only dead-simple ways to fund the UBI, which means tapping in to all money across the system continuously, evenly.

Ah, right. Good luck!

CB in CBDC means central bank ... I thought it was a theoretical excercise from the point of view of a state actor.

I don't think it can be done privately.

To distribute value as UBI you must first acquire value and digital currencies have only one way of acquiring value, by drawing in greedy capitalists with ponzi-like promises of huge gains coming from widespread adoption by whatever suckers they can find.

So booting up your currency would be a problem because initially it would have zero value.

I wonder what could be other ways of transferring value into a new currency apart from promises of meteoric rise of the price.

Other idea is what tether did. Getting value into their currency by promising price stability. Then the other qualities of crypto like ease if transaction and direct untaxability drew the value to it as long as the promise holds.

Re: I'm lonely, and created a private CBDC

#13

Post by nealbozeman »

WantonQuantum wrote: post #11
nealbozeman wrote: post #4

A tax is needed to raise the money for the UBI, and to keep the value and money supply stable. Income tax is unnecessary if you say money that's sitting doing nothing will be taxed out of the system (basically a waste tax). The whole system is being taxed away at 1% per month to pay for the UBI. If you spend, lend, or invest your money as soon as you get it, you never pay taxes. There's a neat equilibrium here. UBI i…

How do you identify me and stop me from claiming multiple UBIs? If someone with no money benefits the most from UBI then my optimal strategy is to be as many people as possible, each with no money.

Yep, this is why it has to be centralized. The Central Bank has to verify identities.

You can have accounts that are unverified, or business accounts that are not individuals. They just don't have a UBI, so the tax hits them without their accounts getting replenished. Spend/use the money fast so you don't have to worry about it.

Re: I'm lonely, and created a private CBDC

#16

Post by notahacker »

nealbozeman wrote: post #4

A tax is needed to raise the money for the UBI, and to keep the value and money supply stable. Income tax is unnecessary if you say money that's sitting doing nothing will be taxed out of the system (basically a waste tax). The whole system is being taxed away at 1% per month to pay for the UBI. If you spend, lend, or invest your money as soon as you get it, you never pay taxes. There's a neat equilibrium here. UBI i…

> If your account is zero, you're not paying any tax, and the account grows quicker.

So the best strategy for any individual to maximise their accumulation in your currency (or in practice, minimise their losses) is to refuse to accept payments into their account, insisting on receiving payments in other currencies instead.

As everyone is incentivised to refuse your currency and nobody is incentivised or required to accept it, your currency can't actually be spent.

Re: I'm lonely, and created a private CBDC

#18

Post by nealbozeman »

notahacker wrote: post #14

Are you the central bank of a nation state or other large region? If not, how is your currency going to be a CBDC, and not yet another token or cryptocurrency of dubious exchange value? Why would anybody want to accept it as money?

Central Banks don't require a nation-state. They can be private. Cryptos and tokens, generally, are decentralized and couldn't be controlled by a central bank. I'm using a private central bank in this case to control the money supply.

Re: I'm lonely, and created a private CBDC

#19

Post by alice157 »

Interesting! I've got a few questions:

It looks like it's currently in limited release at the moment - how would somebody go about playing with this?

Is it just the verification that's private, or also the transaction history? Is it private in the sense that not even the central bank can track it, even with a code change?

How do you expect this system to compare to cryptocurrencies that do liquid staking + inflation, where there's a set amount of inflation, allocated to everyone who plays nice in the network? Does this come down to differences in views on inflation?

Re: I'm lonely, and created a private CBDC

#20

Post by notahacker »

nealbozeman wrote: post #18
notahacker wrote: post #14

Are you the central bank of a nation state or other large region? If not, how is your currency going to be a CBDC, and not yet another token or cryptocurrency of dubious exchange value? Why would anybody want to accept it as money?

Central Banks don't require a nation-state. They can be private. Cryptos and tokens, generally, are decentralized and couldn't be controlled by a central bank. I'm using a private central bank in this case to control the money supply.

Leaving aside the basic definitional stuff (the difference between private banks and central banks is normally considered to be state authority), why does anybody want to accept the money from your "central bank" as payment?

With real central banks the answer is "because creditors in a particular state are legally required to accept it as payment for debt, and everyone else in that state needs it to pay taxes which are owed whether there's money in their account or not". With yours, it's the opposite: if I accept your coins as payment you tax that payment for my work/goods out of my account and if I don't, you give coins to me for nothing. (And I can still earn in other currencies without owing your "tax", just as I always have done)

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