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US Digital Currency

blog.samaltman.com

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41–50 of 139 posts

Re: US Digital Currency

#41

Post by 5555624 »

mikeyanderson wrote: post #7

Idea: If you made every government paycheck and contractor payment made with this currency it would be enough to become a standard of payment, and if you required taxes to be paid with it you'd always have demand.

Aren't they already? Government paychecks and contractor payments are typically direct deposit or electronic funds transfer. My paycheck was deposited directly in my bank account. My contractor payments were, as well. As long as the USDC and USD are the same, it doesn't make a difference.

Re: US Digital Currency

#42

Post by kolbe »

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…

Well, it is just a few hundred words. If he were taking it seriously, the topic would need to be addressed in length with more justifications than a bunch of "I thinks." But it seems everything Sam writes outside of business are just the sorts of essays a smart 18 year old who's really high might write.

Re: US Digital Currency

#43

Post by mavdi »

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've only scratched the surface of cryptocurrencies and come here to make bold, completely untrue statements about their properties.

Having a central actor, like a government, would solve a lot of scaling problem, as well as transaction history issues and also cost associated with making transactions.

Re: US Digital Currency

#44

Post by powera »

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." - not really, on a per-transaction basis. If you buy something at a store with a credit card, it takes weeks to get the money. With Bitcoin, you can spend the money in an hour. For small transactions, there's generally no need to wait past the point that the transaction is broadcast; and for online transactions it's not inconvenient to wait an hour before providing the product.

(of course, overall throughput is still atrocious)

Re: US Digital Currency

#45

Post by toomuchtodo »

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

Payments in developing countries is already fast through the use of mobile phones, no cryptocurrency overhead required.

Re: US Digital Currency

#46

Post by skybrian »

paulmd wrote: post #33
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. 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. Cryptocurrency with a centralized authority is not subject to these issues. After all, if there is a trusted authority then what you really have is a database…

Yes, that's not really cryptocurrency anymore. It's a federal bank that has retail customers.

Maybe not a bad idea, though. It might make some government payments (such as Social Security) more efficient?

Re: US Digital Currency

#47

Post by thisisit »

The only question I have after reading is - What does cryptocurrency actually mean according to the post?

Is it a digital currency?

But, USD is already mostly digital.

Or is it like a real cryptocurrency?

But, the selling point of cryptocurrency is decentralization.

Even if we ignore the decentralization, cryptocurrency has a lot of unresolved issues to work at a massive scale.

PoW burns a lot of energy. And PoS works by making rich richer because of the staking mechanism.

Transaction times on a huge scale network is slow. Yes, there is Lighting/Raiden etc being released but let's wait for it to be proven before we jump the gun.

Before someone says what about centralized cryptocurrency?

That is same as the digital USD. How will cryptocurrency be any different?

Re: US Digital Currency

#48

Post by kolbe »

stale2002 wrote: post #13
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.

If the US Treasury did that, it would be illegal.

The coin thing is a hack that would probably be challenged in court, because it's illegal for the Treasury to arbitrarily print money, except when it's silver.

So, you're not wrong in that the treasury can physically do those things, but it's in the same way that you wouldn't be wrong if you claim North Korea can do the same by illegally counterfeiting endless dollars.

Re: US Digital Currency

#49

Post by tboyd47 »

There are some things about Silicon Valley startup culture I don't think I'll ever understand until I go there, and the obsession with Basic Income is one of them.

Re: US Digital Currency

#50

Post by mundo »

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…

> 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 money" is someone taking out a loan.

* Deficits are when the government spends more money than it takes in in revenue. It borrows money (by issuing Treasury notes and bonds) and spends it on food stamps or bombers or whatever. The amount of money in circulation does not change and there's no direct effect on inflation.

These are two separate things. The government can run a deficit without the Federal Reserve printing money. The Fed can print money without the government borrowing anything. Inflation is emphatically not something the government does so it will have more money to spend.

When inflation is too low, we print money. When we want to spend more than we take in, we borrow. Two related but separate things.

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