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."

Comments

Guy is a moron.

[gurps_npc]

The one and ONLY value of a cryptocurrency is that it can be reliably traded secretly. There is simply NO other reason to use one.

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!!!"