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US Digital Currency

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: US Digital Currency

#111

Post by pshin45 »

rbreve wrote: post #35
bastawhiz wrote: post #26

How would this be better than what we have now? If the answer is "cryptocurrency increases in value," I can assure you that's a terrible reason. Cryptocurrency is slower than card networks. It's more expensive than practically any other way of sending money. And as far as scale goes, it would need to become orders of magnitude more efficient to handle even a small percentage of consumer transactions. After all, what'…

You live in a bubble, your argument is not valid for millions of people that don’t have bank accounts, have you seen western union fees? Africa and Latin America will embrace cryptocurrencies because it will be faster and cheaper and will not require people to open a bank account, only a cell phone with data which most people already have

To add to this point, M-Pesa has been a huge success in Kenya, but has had trouble expanding to other countries because of some inherent limitations of M-Pesa's model.

A cryptocurrency could enable the next evolution of mobile payment services like M-Pesa. I touched on this in a past blog post:

https://medium.com/@petershin45/hate-bitcoin-this-might-chan... (You can scroll down to the section titled "How Bitcoin can help the poor and unbanked")

Re: US Digital Currency

#112

Post by censkrtrdgh »

dnomad wrote: post #95
mundo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Inflating currency is a hidden way to spend money it doesn't have. This seems to be a recurring area of confusion in every thread about cryptocurrencies, so let's clear it up now: * The amount of money in circulation is manipulated by the Federal Reserve. When the Fed increases the money supply ("printing money"), it does so through banks, by creating money and letting them lend it. The recipient of the "printed mo…

> When inflation is too low, we print money. This is really not how it works. Many economists think this is how it works but actual real world events have made it very clear that governments cannot simply manufacture inflation [1]. Governments like Japan wish they could produce inflation. Inflation is much, much, much more complicated than merely "too much money." It's much more about real economic quantities affecti…

You also exhibit a rather dangerous lack of knowledge.

Look up the federal discount window And then treasury bonds.

Typically a bank can get interest free money and plow that into interest baring bonds backed by the government. They then get is free profit off the spread, this was a common back door method of 'liquidty injection' during the financial crisis. Liquidity injection, literally a euphemism for giving away money, and who gets the money? Those closest to the federal spigot, and what happens when you have more money chasing fewer resources? Inflation. Let's not even get into the bizarro world of inflation measurements, ( food and energy aren't even included ), most 'inflation' is seen in asset inflation, rich people can only eat so much cavier and blue fin tuna, the vast majority of their money goes into assets, so they take free money and put it into real estate and stocks and bonds, meanwhile the poor suckers trading their labor for cash see their real income lose purchasing power as the real assets they want like homes and a retirement fund, become increasingly difficult pipe dreams.

I'm truly sick of people who think they have economic knowledge try to explain away the real experience of the vast majority of people, such people and such experts are really just the well paid propagandists of the rich and powerful. Disgusting.

Re: US Digital Currency

#113

Post by returnnan »

On inflation, pretty much no one here actually knows the truth.

Look up the federal discount window And then treasury bonds.

Typically a bank can get interest free money and plow that into interest baring bonds backed by the government. They then get is free profit off the spread, this was a common back door method of 'liquidty injection' during the financial crisis. Liquidity injection, literally a euphemism for giving away money, and who gets the money? Those closest to the federal spigot, and what happens when you have more money chasing fewer resources? Inflation. Let's not even get into the bizarro world of inflation measurements, ( food and energy aren't even included ), most 'inflation' is seen in asset inflation, rich people can only eat so much cavier and blue fin tuna, the vast majority of their money goes into assets, so they take free money and put it into real estate and stocks and bonds, meanwhile the poor suckers trading their labor for cash see their real income lose purchasing power as the real assets they want like homes and a retirement fund, become increasingly difficult pipe dreams.

I'm truly sick of people who think they have economic knowledge try to explain away the real experience of the vast majority of people, such people and such experts are really just the well paid propagandists of the rich and powerful.

Re: US Digital Currency

#114

Post by fra »

nobrains wrote: post #90
joejohnson wrote: post #87

Amazing that someone so naive could be given such a platform. Oh, silicon valley :) >> 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 ok for the government to have some, but I think the network needs to be mostly in charge (e.g., the government couldn’t be allowed to arbitraril…

There are two problems with this control (QE) that the citizens are concerned about: 1. It reduces their cash savings by the ratio of the amount of new money injected to the total supply 2. It is unfair, as the first receipients of this new money get free money. (Inflation increases as that money flows through to everyone, however, the first receipients of this money don't get to face the inflation). The second issue…

Which cash savings? The median savings for a US family is ~$5000. What you're really saying is "it inconveniences the rich".

Re: US Digital Currency

#115

Post by simonpaul »

Apparently my views are too much for the moderators.

On inflation, pretty much no one here actually knows the truth.

Look up the federal discount window And then treasury bonds.

Typically a bank can get interest free money and plow that into interest baring bonds backed by the government. They then get is free profit off the spread, this was a common back door method of 'liquidty injection' during the financial crisis. Liquidity injection, literally a euphemism for giving away money, and who gets the money? Those closest to the federal spigot, and what happens when you have more money chasing fewer resources? Inflation. Let's not even get into the bizarro world of inflation measurements, ( food and energy aren't even included ), most 'inflation' is seen in asset inflation, rich people can only eat so much cavier and blue fin tuna, the vast majority of their money goes into assets, so they take free money and put it into real estate and stocks and bonds, meanwhile the poor suckers trading their labor for cash see their real income lose purchasing power as the real assets they want like homes and a retirement fund, become increasingly difficult pipe dreams.

I'm truly sick of people who think they have economic knowledge try to explain away the real experience of the vast majority of people, such people and such experts are really just the well paid propagandists of the rich and powerful.

Re: US Digital Currency

#116

Post by ac29 »

snissn wrote: post #107
bastawhiz wrote: post #26

How would this be better than what we have now? If the answer is "cryptocurrency increases in value," I can assure you that's a terrible reason. Cryptocurrency is slower than card networks. It's more expensive than practically any other way of sending money. And as far as scale goes, it would need to become orders of magnitude more efficient to handle even a small percentage of consumer transactions. After all, what'…

> Cryptocurrency is slower than card networks. How long does it take you to set up a merchant account? With cryptocurrency, it's practically instant.

24 hours or so. Its a non-issue for business operations.

Re: US Digital Currency

#117

Post by raesene9 »

gwbas1c wrote: post #83
raesene9 wrote: post #23

As others have already commented, existing currencies are already "digital". On my most recent trip abroad (to Copenhagen) I took some physical currency, and didn't use it at all. Every transaction was digital and instantaneous (I use a Monzo Mastercard). I got a smartphone notification within 5 seconds of having approved the transaction. The original promise of "cryptocurrencies" appeared, to me, to be decentralizat…

Take the time to read the original Bitcoin paper. It discusses various other electronic currency systems and why they weren't good enough. The short answer, though, is that if you have a trusted 3rd party managing the monetary system, there's really no need for cyptocurrency. (Edit) Cryptocurrency solves the trust problem. Overall, we can trust our government, thus there's no need for cryptocurrency.

Indeed, that's a theoretical benefit of the cryptocurrency world over fiat. However, in practice, what seems to be happening is that the decentralized aspect is sacrificed in the rush to make money, which promotes the use of trusted third party exchanges.

In reality, all that cryptocurrencies are doing is, partially, replacing governments and banks with unregulated companies who are still quite likely to be subject to government actions.

Re: US Digital Currency

#118

Post by raesene9 »

mikro2nd wrote: post #88
gwbas1c wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the time to read the original Bitcoin paper. It discusses various other electronic currency systems and why they weren't good enough. The short answer, though, is that if you have a trusted 3rd party managing the monetary system, there's really no need for cyptocurrency. (Edit) Cryptocurrency solves the trust problem. Overall, we can trust our government, thus there's no need for cryptocurrency.

You (and I'm guessing/assuming you're an American citizen, here, forgive me if I have it wrong) might be able to trust your government. Many of us in the Shithole Countries can not. Then, too, you may be able to trust your government at the present time (or, at least, believe you're able to) but that does not account for some future time when that might not be true.

You can trust the crypto currency exchanges?

Why would you trust say binance, or bitfinex ? what basis do you have for that trust?

And if you trade on a possibly more trustworthy exchange like coinbase, you're right back to trusting a government, as the US Gov could shut them down if they wanted...

Re: US Digital Currency

#119

Post by raesene9 »

uudhodhd wrote: post #99
actsasbuffoon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The essential feature is preventing a single party from tampering with transactions or account balances. Are there examples of this actually happening? I'd think that would be pretty damaging to any bank that engaged in such behavior.

There are countless examples. The US government seized all gold. The Greek government froze accounts, Cyprus engaged in a 'bail in', governments constantly freeze accounts of 'bad' actors, payment processors will decide without cause to stop servicing clients because they are in adult content or because they are WikiLeaks. There so many examples, it goes on and on ad nauseum.

if we're citing examples of why "trusted third parties" caused losses to a currencies' users, what about all the crypto currency exchanges that have been robbed/gone bust etc?

There's always that class of risk unless you do things properly without a trusted third party.

Unfortunately in the crypto currency space, most of that benefit appears to have been sacrificed in pursuit of the ability to trade faster to make money...

Re: US Digital Currency

#120

Post by thedudemabry »

snissn wrote: post #107
bastawhiz wrote: post #26

How would this be better than what we have now? If the answer is "cryptocurrency increases in value," I can assure you that's a terrible reason. Cryptocurrency is slower than card networks. It's more expensive than practically any other way of sending money. And as far as scale goes, it would need to become orders of magnitude more efficient to handle even a small percentage of consumer transactions. After all, what'…

> Cryptocurrency is slower than card networks. How long does it take you to set up a merchant account? With cryptocurrency, it's practically instant.

While a valid point, setting up a merchant account also imbues the merchant with some trust properties that are not available with a cryptocurrency wallet. Namely, the ability to procedural and legal recourse if something goes wrong with any new transaction.
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