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US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve

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21–27 of 27 posts

Re: US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve

#21
post #20

Central banks operate provide real-time gross settlement (RTGS) systems. This allows transfers to settle in real time. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_gross_settlement Domestic banks have accounts with the central bank and can move money using RTGS. If the central banks allowed individuals and non-bank companies to open accounts then they could use the RTGS to transfer money instantly. There would be no b…

Exactly. In this case there's no point in being distributed. You have to trust the central bank anyways, so just let them handle the servers instead of wasting a colossal computing effort in verifying transactions or waiting whole minutes versus milliseconds to confirm transactions. You also get invulnerability to the likes of 51% attacks or "selfish mining" and ability to revert frauds or big blunders.

But I guess this is a good example of a new tech that reminds people that the basics are still not out of place.

I proposed a semi-centralized crypto currency with the same things in mind but based on existing fiat some time ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/altcoin/comments/1t6nu0/altcoin_prop...

Re: US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve

#22
The government doesn't want to make money transfer and settlement easier. Why do you think the highest denomination of currency is $100?

We literally ship jumbo-jets full of $100 bills abroad so that foreign banks can maintain adequate reserves. If we cared about this, we'd print $10,000 bills. The system as it stands funnels movement of large amounts of money, which eases tax collection and other enforcement measures.

Re: US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve

#23

Well, I know you said this is "up for debate", but really, any form of digital currency issued by the Federal Reserve wouldn't be anything any consumer would want. The "Federal Reserve" is a federation of privately-owned banks authorized by the US Government as the banking monopoly that is permitted to issue its currency. The Federal Reserve is the bank that US government borrows from, and the private banks that issu…

This is outlandish.

(1) The Federal Reserve has 12 member banks, none of which are private--they're really just branches of the central bank. Those member banks have shareholders consisting of local private banks. These 12 banks don't pick monetary policy. The Federal Reserve board does. Only 1 of the 7 members of the Federal Reserve Board can be picked from the leadership of the 12 member banks. Since the Federal Reserve Board is what actually decides monetary policy, its nonsensical to think of the Federal Reserve as a federation. Because its not. Its a central bank, and has very centralized power.

(2) While banks are part shareholders in the central bank's member banks, IT IS NOT ORGANIZED LIKE AN ACTUAL CORPORATION. They do not 'own' federal reserve banks. They cannot sell their shares, and make no money from them (well, they might earn meager interest). Its literally just a deposit that they make with the Fed that entitles them to send representatives to their regional bank. Even if each member bank was totally dominated by the will of their member banks (which there is no incentive for this to be the case), the sum of their influence on monetary policy is their single representative in the board of governors (who was confirmed by congress!)

(3) The federal government does not borrow directly from the Fed. It issues bonds to the general bond market through weekly auctions directly from the Treasury, and the Fed buys those in the aftermarket to manipulate interest rates. Doing this requires them to add or subtract cash from the money supply. Obama doesn't call Bernake, say "Hey Ben, we need some money for the kitchen we're remodeling", and get the response "Check your bank account, already wired the money! LOL!".

There is plenty of information on the the federal reserve's website describing exactly how its organized.

At the end of the day, if there is ANY chance of the US dollar being replaced by another currency as the dominant currency in the US economy, the central bank will get involved. Moreover, if bitcoin ever gets big enough to have an actual economy that isn't just people converting to US dollar (ie, rent, bills, and wages are paid with bitcoin), we'll have a grand opportunity to test whether having monetary policy is actually a good thing, or if its bad. Because if its bad, and we discover that having a central bank control the money supply is actually a Good Idea, then consumers WILL NOT choose bitcoin.

Hopefully by then there will be some implementation by some central bank somewhere that makes sense, so that we get all the benefits of a digital currency without all the inflexibility of bitcoin's built in monetary policy.

Re: US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve

#24

I was thinking about this very idea. The Federal Reserve introduces a crypto currency that is centrally controlled and replaces the dollar (over time). Next, income taxes and State sales tax are eliminated and the revenue is replaced with a transaction fee. The beuatiful thing would be that this would give the Federal Reserve a real control over the economy. Things heating up? twist a knob and increase the transactio…

>The beuatiful thing would be that this would give the Federal Reserve a real control over the economy.

Though such a system would certainly give the FED more control over the economy, I don't know how beautiful that would be.

Re: US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve

#25
post #9

Is someone confused here? Isn't the dollar already the digital currency of the Federal Reserve and the international banking system? The dollar is a digital currency pretending to be a physical currency for the naive.

Really I think the article is asking for a payment system that has Bitcoin-like qualities (irrevocable, low or no fee, immediate settlement, cryptographically secure, auditable) yet is denominated in USD. Something like Dwolla or (as somebody else mentioned) a consumer version of Fedwire.

Re: US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve

#26
Well, the Fed doesn't create interest free money so doing this would be quite a radical change in policy. But it's an interesting idea. The fed could create a new block chain and offer to buy any coins mined at a fixed rate. In this manner it could create digital cash that it wouldn't have to do much to manage. Just being there to guarantee liquidity would make that type of coin have value.

Re: US $ Crypto Currency by Federal Reserve

#27
if you want a centrally managed cryptocurrency and can tolerate deferring double spend detection (i.e. you have an overdraft and debt collection system) then there are better cryptocash solutions than bitcoin that don't require a block chain and provide untraceable transactions and complete anonymity. The only worthwhile innovation in bitcoin in fact is its use of a block chain to eliminate the possibility of monetary policy manipulation.
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