71–80 of 162 posts
It is the end of privacy and the beginning of telling you literally what you will be able to do or not with your own earnings abd for how long, if they decide it is appropriate. This is more of treating people like animals than individuals IMHO.
Meh. The article expends zero effort in actually engaging with the Reserve Bank of India's motivations or the CBDC design [1], and is filled with shallow comments about the roll-out in other countries. This is a very important topic as it has the potential to reshape banking/economics on the timescale of decades. For a good down-to-earth understanding of "layer 1" -vs- "layer 2" money, refer the following post [2]. I…
Most examinations of CBDC paint a grim picture of things to come, mostly in terms of yielding absolute power to the central bank. As with any situation involving power, with good intentions you can do wonderful things, with bad intentions you can do equally horrifying things. In the Indian context, the latter is of particular concern, especially when one man can demonetise the whole country overnight on a whim. There…
Besides that: why should I put my effort at the management of people I do not trust so that they do what they deem appropriate without paying for their mistakes? Am I his slave or something?
Cashless societies terrify me. So easy to control people when you can decide what and with whom they can transact with.
So easy to control people when you can decide what and with whom they can transact with. Surprise! Your bank and credit card company can do that now. As being proposed in the USA, a CBDC will only affect settlement transactions between banks. Everything else will stay exactly the way it is now except transactions will be much faster with settlements taking place in real time, 24/7/365 instead of only during "bankers…
We literally have just that. It is a lie that digital money is required for that
This is just side effect of them putting new system up just for that that allows that.
There would be nothing stopping them to do that for the "old" money. Hell, there are already systems for it, a bunch of banks in my country have it... of course they want extra for it (gotta pay for itself)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, with most salaries going to bank accounts it's half way there already, isn't it ?
CDBC is way beyond that, it allows things like if someone has taken too many flights that year, bought too much sugar or alcohol that month you could make the offending purchases or all their purchases more expensive to penalize them. Or you know if they had a bad social credit score, too bad now your morning coffee costs 1.5X of the person next to you, maybe reconsider your actions. Few reasons to implement this stu…
Sure, with paper money you could just take it out of the bank and pay directly but you can do stuff to that too like making it more expensive to take out then track people who just take out big sums of money
Like, sure, all electronic makes it easier, but it is by no means impossible or even hard now. Again, only thing stopping it is the law, if that is fucked doesn't matter how money are transferred
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most examinations of CBDC paint a grim picture of things to come, mostly in terms of yielding absolute power to the central bank. As with any situation involving power, with good intentions you can do wonderful things, with bad intentions you can do equally horrifying things. In the Indian context, the latter is of particular concern, especially when one man can demonetise the whole country overnight on a whim. There…
Thanks for the link -- it is a nice discussion, and contains pointers to interesting content that I wasn't aware of. (likewise, for the sibling comment with links about mBridge) I appreciate the privacy concerns, but for anyone reading, the tradeoffs have a completely different meaning in the Indian context. 1. A fraction of the Indian populace is so poor that the cost of operating a cash economy (printing currency,…
govt / RBI might be able to give a boost to the CBDC by giving some Sec80c benefits. historically that's been a good channel to 'nudge' people into putting money where the govt wants towards.
> For 11 years now, Chaitanya has been working with retired Colonel Mathew Thomas to nullify the UIDAI’s contracts with foreign companies allowing access to Aadhaar data ... “Our major concern is: Did the citizens of India give express right to the government in the year 2010 to hand over their data to US. foreign companies? For sure, I did not give any consent,” said Chaitanya. Aadhaar data consists of citizens’ bank accounts, ration cards, addresses, mobile numbers etc.
> ... the High Court has advised Thomas to approach the Supreme Court again ... the Supreme Court in the Aadhaar judgment had clarified that “private entities shouldn’t have access to Aadhaar data.” The Supreme Court also said that before accessing biometric data even by the government, judicial authorisation must be a requirement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the kicker; I don't believe there's any government that wants anonymous digital cash. If anything, they want to be the only ones that can track it.
Now you are assuming that "governments" and "citizens" are two disjoint groups with different agendas. That's a really bleak way of looking at it, at least in functioning democracies. I'd certainly protest loudly if some sort of anonymity wasn't part of the plan at every step. I was happy to see at least some footnotes from a recent pilot CDBC mentioning this. https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/rapporter/e-kr…
"Identity-verified: Financial institutions in the United States are subject to robust rules that are designed to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. A CBDC would need to be designed to comply with these rules. In practice, this would mean that a CBDC intermediary would need to verify the identity of a person accessing CBDC, just as banks and other financial institutions currently verify the identities of their customers. In this regard, a CBDC would differ materially from cash, which enables anonymous transactions. While central banks are unable to fully prevent cash from being used for illicit purposes, a CBDC could potentially be used at much greater scale and velocity than cash, so compliance with laws designed to combat money laundering and funding terrorism is particularly important for CBDC."[1]
"Protecting consumer privacy is critical. Any CBDC would need to strike an appropriate balance, however, between safeguarding the privacy rights of consumers and affording the transparency necessary to deter criminal activity."[1]
Privacy is somewhat considered, like in question 12, (How could a CBDC provide privacy to consumers without providing complete anonymity and facilitating illicit financial activity?) but to me it sounds more like privacy as in safeguarding information from third parties than privacy from traceability.
[1]https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/money-and-...
https://www.medianama.com/2022/11/223-petition-against-uidai... > For 11 years now, Chaitanya has been working with retired Colonel Mathew Thomas to nullify the UIDAI’s contracts with foreign companies allowing access to Aadhaar data ... “Our major concern is: Did the citizens of India give express right to the government in the year 2010 to hand over their data to US. foreign companies? For sure, I did not give any…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most examinations of CBDC paint a grim picture of things to come, mostly in terms of yielding absolute power to the central bank. As with any situation involving power, with good intentions you can do wonderful things, with bad intentions you can do equally horrifying things. In the Indian context, the latter is of particular concern, especially when one man can demonetise the whole country overnight on a whim. There…
Thanks for the link -- it is a nice discussion, and contains pointers to interesting content that I wasn't aware of. (likewise, for the sibling comment with links about mBridge) I appreciate the privacy concerns, but for anyone reading, the tradeoffs have a completely different meaning in the Indian context. 1. A fraction of the Indian populace is so poor that the cost of operating a cash economy (printing currency,…
CBDC (along with its less august bitcoin sibling) are ultimately questions rather than answers: what are the fundamental building blocks of trust in society (whether analog or digital), how invariant are they under cultural transformations and what might be optimal or at least stable designs (that do no depend on a perpetual pool of "low information" crowds).
Remind me about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis... > On 8 November 2016, the Government of India announced the demonetisation of all ₹500 and ₹1,000 banknotes > Several people were reported to have died from standing in queues for hours to exchange their demonetised banknotes.[180][181][182][183][184][185] Deaths were also attributed to lack of medical help due to refusal of demonetised b…
> India’s central bank has estimated that 99 per cent of the high denomination banknotes cancelled last year were deposited or exchanged for new currency, dashing government hopes that its contentious demonetisation exercise would wipe out huge amounts of “black money" ... complex money-laundering networks sprang up in the wake of the demonetisation to help wealthy Indians deposit huge volumes of previously undeclared currency without exposing themselves to tax authorities. Such people allegedly sold the old notes, at a discount, to brokers who then dispatched low-income Indians to deposit or exchange them at banks.