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Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

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Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#91

Post by vmception »

pavlov wrote: post #81
dragonelite wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been cashless for pretty much a decade, I'm more interested in what smart money that can be programmed can do. Like can i get paid instantly for every KWH i deliver back to the grid via solar panels. Can my salary or hourly contract be streamed to my bank account. These sort of things are all possible in crypto.

They are also possible with the instantaneous bank transfer system that exists in Europe. If an employer wanted to pay you once an hour, they could. I’m not sure what the point is, though.

SEPA is often heralded as being that convenient but this isn't complete information.

Basically there is a parallel instant SEPA that is only partially implemented in between certain banks in some countries. Cross border SEPA between two SEPA system countries is much more likely to be just as slow as the US ACH system.

So the only way people could possibly believe this works is if they and their friends use the same banks. Which is basically the case, most Europeans don’t even use the SEPA system to another European country compared to using a few big banks in their single tiny country with their friends and local businesses. But if an outsider wanted to do business in the European banking system, wanting to believe the experience Europeans come on forums to talk about, they likely wont be able to experience it.

Expect 3 - 7 business days and some questions for your banking partners who might not know where the transaction currently is.

Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#92

Post by EL_Loco »

culturestate wrote: post #67
ur-whale wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does civilians owning firearms have to do with a well-trained military force taking over the seats of power? Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response. Given the amount of private gun ownership in the US, holding on to power after a coup would prove a rather difficult proposition.

> Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response. As well-armed as the citizenry may be, the military is infinitely more so - they have, you know, tanks and planes and smart bombs - and in this fantasy civil war-esque scenario I don’t think the junta would be shy about exploiting that advantage.

Yeah, that's a complete fantasy. Since in US society the riot police doesn't come around with tanks and machine guns mowing down protesters, people have created this delusionthat that if they grabbed a couple of hundred M4s they could take on a government with a full blown army, and that when the shit hit the fan that army would still choose to fight with just shields and batons. There is a clip from the January invasion where a woman is fleeing the scene crying, because of the a 'violent' response from the police. I even think she just got pepper-sprayed (can't remember exactly). When asked what was she doing there, she said she went there to start a revolution. There's a passage in a book (can't remember now either) about the Mexican revolution, where a man hopped on a donkey and left his tiny village to join the armed struggle. About 5 miles from a conflict site, he heard the boom of a cannon going off. He stopped, turned the donkey 180 degrees and went back to his village.

Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#93

Post by brimble »

ur-whale wrote: post #59
pphysch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does civilians owning firearms have to do with a well-trained military force taking over the seats of power?

> What does civilians owning firearms have to do with a well-trained military force taking over the seats of power? Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response. Given the amount of private gun ownership in the US, holding on to power after a coup would prove a rather difficult proposition.

I haven't seen any real-world evidence that high levels of individual firearm ownership correlate with the preservation of liberty and democracy. Most examples people like to bring out are resistance to a foreign occupation, typically with external assistance from a real military and/or shipments of military arms. And, perhaps tellingly, the result after the occupiers leave is rarely democracy.

Meanwhile improvised bombs seem to be far more important to and effective for a modern insurgency than firearms.

Add in that it sure seems to be more common to read about private militias aiding an authoritarian coup than successfully resisting it and I think the pro-widespread-individual-firearm-ownership faction has an uphill battle just to demonstrate that the practice is a wash, let alone beneficial to the preservation of liberty and democracy.

There are a few cases of private arms being used in anti-corruption "wars" or stand-offs in the US, but at least as many in which they're used for essentially the opposite purpose (supporting anti-liberty, and especially racist, policies and actions). In any case, the national guard stepping in tends to end these in a hurry.

The notion that the 2nd amendment is vital to the preservation of liberty and democracy in 2022 seems to be dubious at best. I'm not in favor of a blanket gun ban but I think that particular argument in favor of gun rights—which seems to be what anti-gun-regulation folks fall back on very quickly, when challenged, which makes sense as it's the reason given in founders' writings and, arguably, in the constitution—is, at best, pretty weak.

Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#94

Post by sgerenser »

pessimizer wrote: post #84
CrazyStat wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How the USD has lost 98% of its value since the 70s? By what metric has the USD lost 98% of its value since the 70s?

It's hyperbole referring to how much US dollars stored in a mattress 50 years ago would be worth now. If, instead, you earned money from wages and/or invested in stocks/bonds/real estate/comic books, nothing of the sort happened.

Even if “the 70s” means 1970, it’s still not 98%, more like about 86% according to: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#95

Post by wbsss4412 »

salawat wrote: post #87
djbusby wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does the Post remain private, since the Government runs that too?

They never open the package, and technically, they are quasi-public. Public enough that they can't play fast and loose like everyone else, but private where it matters in terms of not having literal Federally administered databases all just eafer for the reaping.

The fed is quasi public too? It’s actually less public than the postal service, the postal service is a fully public agency, the fed is partially governed by private banks.

Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#96

Post by selectodude »

krapp wrote: post #63
ur-whale wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does civilians owning firearms have to do with a well-trained military force taking over the seats of power? Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response. Given the amount of private gun ownership in the US, holding on to power after a coup would prove a rather difficult proposition.

>Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response. Unless enough citizens were on the side of the coup. I don't know why no one ever seems to acknowledge that as a possibility, especially after Jan. 6. Gun owners are just as driven by politics and ideology as anyone else. Plus just because you have a gun in a safe and maybe sometimes shoot watermelons in the backyard with it doesn…

It would be interesting to see how these "3 percenters" would do living in the mountains and eating bush meat for five years.

Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#97

Post by acdha »

salawat wrote: post #89
culturestate wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response. As well-armed as the citizenry may be, the military is infinitely more so - they have, you know, tanks and planes and smart bombs - and in this fantasy civil war-esque scenario I don’t think the junta would be shy about exploiting that advantage.

...All of which require extensive logistics to employ that have hitherto been predicated in the Armed Forces not being on the wrong side of the American public's ire. I.e. you can handle hostile logistics in Afghanistan because it isn't that hard to get the raw materials stateside, and move them through Allied supply chains. Remove the part where it's easy to get things Stateside, and I assure you, a U.S. military co…

> The military knows exactly the hell it will be entrenched in if it ever goes against the public's wishes. They literally wrote the book.

The entire public’s wishes, yes. Now consider what would have happened if the military leadership hadn’t resisted the call to join the January 6th insurrection — it’s much easier to imagine something like 90s Serbia where a substantial fraction of the population hopped up on propaganda supports the military efforts and will keep their neighbors from forming an effective resistance.

Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#98

Post by acdha »

jlarocco wrote: post #8
mjevans wrote: post #7

The mention of blockchain in the summary worries me. We have real world data that shows us this only leads to wasted electricity and fabricated silicon shortages/outrageously expensive computer hardware. The idea of a public ledger and distributed witness signatures is sound though, and that should be the basis of a government approved system of inter-reserve asset tracking.

I think you may be confusing "blockchain" with "bitcoin". A blockchain is just blocks of data linked together using hash functions to guarantee the authenticity of previous blocks. There's no mining, and only a tiny amount of electricity used.

There’s a fair amount of confusion around that term, however: for example, Bitcoin proponents spent most of a decade saying that only proof-of-waste systems were true blockchains because they knew that anyone picking a different mechanism would have much better performance and cost numbers.

Re: Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study

#99

Post by jimbob45 »

culturestate wrote: post #67
ur-whale wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does civilians owning firearms have to do with a well-trained military force taking over the seats of power? Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response. Given the amount of private gun ownership in the US, holding on to power after a coup would prove a rather difficult proposition.

> Such a military force would be facing a very well armed citizen-led guerilla response. As well-armed as the citizenry may be, the military is infinitely more so - they have, you know, tanks and planes and smart bombs - and in this fantasy civil war-esque scenario I don’t think the junta would be shy about exploiting that advantage.

That's a weird argument. Yes, obviously the US government can win any engagement against anyone, including its own civilians, by nuking them at any time. Clearly there is additional nuance to this argument since the US didn't just nuke the Vietnamese, Iraqis, or Jan 6 protesters from the get-go.
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