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Fedcoin Rising?
giulioprisco writes US economists are considering a government-sponsored digital currency. On February 3, David Andolfatto, Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, wrote a blog post based on a presentation he gave at the International Workshop on P2P Financial Systems 2015 [YouTube video]. The title of the blog post is "Fedcoin: On the Desirability of a Government Cryptocurrency."
So they have a system that allows you to pass around *coins as if they were US dollars (the exchange rate is pegged) but all the transactions are digitally tracked in real time? Fuck yeah the feds want that!
This would be a huge boom for Bitcoin.
It's ironic: The existence of a completely untrustable cryptocurrency will dramatically improve the credibility of more trustworthy cryptocurrencies.
Because what's better than expanding the spying capability of centralized payment systems like credit cards by making all payment data by everyone available to anyone, I'm sure the feds, your neighbor, and your boss would love to know what you are buying online.
What a great idea, they should branch out Untrusted Computing to add to FedCoin. This will be a welcome addition to custom disk firmware, specialized random number generators, data duplication and retention services and so on.
That arbitrarily seizes cash left and right because it is deposited in "structured deposits" to avoid a policy requiring the transaction information be logged in a government database. I'm sure this will be a real hit--with the IRS.
If this actually replaced hard currency and became a widely accepted standard, the government would eventually introduce legislation to ban the usage of all non-government cryptocurrencies. I'm not sure what the argument will be ("we can't afford it anymore", "terrorists used cash to commit atrocity X", etc.) but it would fit in with the model of our current system (the dollar is the only legal, federal U.S. currency).
Also, from the article: Understanding this, it is unlikely that Fedcoin will be the preferred vehicle to finance illegal activities. -- This would cast an unfair, "guilty until proven innocent" suspicion upon anyone wishing to still use cash. And there's no way in hell I'd trust the government to not abuse the privacy issues. They wouldn't be able to control themselves with that info...
1) The government has no desire to do help people trade currency.
2) Only children under 10 would in fact believe that the government could not track the cryptocurrency they themselves created, even if it were open sourced.
3) There would be a market for it in foreign countries. The US government could pay spies, rebels etc. with said cryptocurrency, secure in the knowledge that the Russians, Chinese, North Koreans, ISIL, and Boku-Haram could not track the Fedcoin. Of course, those people would not try to track it, they would simply kill anyone found with it. (Too be honest, China would just lock them up, and Russia would probably trade them to the US in exchange for the right to sell oil).
Children under 10 have rather small amounts of money, so the market is on the small side.
There is no credible market for a FedCoin, and frankly I think the guy that thought this up is about as smart as someone that thinks that "Wouldn't it be nice if China would tell us all of North Korea's military secrets? Has anyone asked? Let's go ask them RIGHT AWAY!!!"
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I hereby declare the number 90185349087539845793845389573985739485739487593857893 in the name of the King of Spain. What will you give me for that?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The future is finally here! Now we're going to have a government-backed currency with a central bank that can control interest rates! Anyone can exchange it at will! Of course, the institutions that monitor these transactions are going to have to follow a set of regulations, and probably have some sort of government-backed insurance for deposits. But it'll be digital! Wave of the future!
Will you be able to buy and sell anonymously as with cash, or will this become another eyeball in the already far too massive panopticon?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
We have the Fed reporting live from the Amazon Rainforest
"These are some really nice trees"
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
The Federal Reserve Corporation doesn't want anyone cutting in on their business of creating debt out of thin air and exploiting fractional reserve banking. They certainly would love to shut down bitcoin like they do with other competing currencies but they have two challenges: it is internationally decentralized and their is no "official" alternative. Enter Fiat FedCoin that can be legally enforced and signed by international authorities. America was better off without a central bank and these vipers will do anything to inject themselves into every financial transaction.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be-T J
Finally, a way to buy stuff online without cash needing to change hands. You could have some sort of an account id - let's call it a credit card number.
You're replacing one instantly transferable fiat currency with another.
Can I use it over at that darkleaks site?
Do you have ESP?
This whole article seems to be a discussion of "if apples where oranges."
He goes off the rails right from the beginning with his definition of money. He says money cannot be a store of value; when in fact that is one of the most important properties of money. It is from there were he misses why bitcoin is taking off somewhat. He should know this as he points out it is deflationary and thus a good store of value. So he completely misses why it is cryptographic, and why that matters. Talks about the fed controlling the exchange on the one hand yet talks of mining or the fed mining on the other, so he obviously doesn't understand that the mining is the how of the supply of bitcoin, nor that the idea of bitcoins is to work without a trusted third party, which he puts back in as the FED.
Without that cryptographic underpinning that is impossible if the FED controls supply what is left? The fed distributes signed serial numbers that they generate with their special random number generator? And at any time they could release a near infinite supply of them and crash the market. Think of the possibility to perfectly counterfeit FEDCOIN if someone hacked the FED's key!
This would surprise me if the FED actually did this. Not even they are this stupid.
Okay. So, I realize I'll probably get modded down for this, but can anyone here at least admit that this seems to be leading more and more toward Revelation 13:17, regarding buying and selling?
We've had the technical means for years, but of course it would take the will (or complacency) of the people to allow the wheels of the Anti-Christ to spin; possibly in the name of security.
For personal transactions, wouldn't the most secure means to have be some sort of programmable device implanted directly into the body (hand or forehead maybe)? And, somewhere in the ID of that device is an encoding of '0110 0110 0110' (666 for you non-BCD users)?
Not proselytizing. Just wanted to open for discussion.
Look, getting a chip is completely irrelevant.
All you need is a database that has your fingerprints and or/ eyescan on file. You should not need a chip. You should be able to pay for things with a thumbprint.
Can this be hacked? yes. But so can everything else. Imagine a world where we can give up on passwords!
A national or world wide active directory.
The micro-chip fear is actually very dated.
The gubment has enough overreach as it is.
Dude, there are tons of competing currencies. You just cannot call them things like a "dollar" or a "quarter". You can also make a soda. You just cannot call it a "Coke" or a "Sprite".
Your ad here. Ask me how!
.just IMAGINE what some future president could do to his/her political enemies if the treasury could simply nullify all their money!!!!
Let's see..... pro-life president zero's-out the bank accounts of Planned Parenthood and their supporters? Gay president nullified the money of religious people? religious president zero's the money of gay activists? Where does it end? (hint: any possible end to this corruption and divisiveness becomes less and less visible as you transfer more and more power and control to the central government.) Maximum freedom actually requires less government power and control (something our founders repeatedly warned us about, but we've been ignoring them for far too long).