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IBM and Linux Foundation To Create Blockchain For Major Financial Institutions (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Following initial news of the project in March, IBM, under the supervision of the Linux Foundation and in partnership with several major tech interests including Fujitsu, has announced today that it will lead development of a new blockchain — a financial transaction ledger fashioned after the Bitcoin model. Provisionally called Open Ledger, the new initiative is aimed specifically at financial transactions, and though it will be open source in terms of development, but 'semi-private' in operation. Those with an interest in the project are said to include JP Morgan, Wells Fargo and the Bank of England. IBM VP Jerry Cuomo, who has discussed the project with Fortune and Wired, commented "The current blockchain is a great design pattern...Now, how do we make that real for business? What are the key attributes needed to make that happen? That's what this organization is about."
Someone please tell me that I've got this wrong. IBM, the Linux Foundation, and various financial institutions want to create a fully traceable currency system? Gee, what could possibly go wrong with that? Let's call this new currency VirtuaCoin or VC for short. Sure, sure, you can convert your VC to cash. But even today there are limits to how much cash you can draw out without raising red flags. I think it is $50k, at the moment. After that you get a visit from men in black. I can see this being lowered quickly, until the goal of removing cash from the economy is met. After that every transaction is fully traceable. I'm assuming that this ledger works like a doubly-linked list, so it would be easy to traverse backwards up the chain of ownership, and to see all the places a particular mark's money is going
There's certainly some good sides to VC - money laundering will be a thing of the past, as are other white collar crimes - embezzling, bribery, extortion. Money laundering, bribery and extortion are pretty self explanatory - you get to see where the money came from, and where it went to. Embezzling may be a bit harder; but if a person is only set to get $PAY_LEVEL of VCs per month, and he gets 2x or 3x that - Men in Black again, and problem is solved.
In fact, we may go so far as to say you must be government authorized to receive VCs. Perfect for the government, as part of your agreement, they could take a reasonable 25% to 65% tax right off of the top of the VCs you've generated in real time. Don't worry, though, you can file paperwork to get about 20% back at the end of the year. I'm sure the 20% back part will become less over time.
The downside is if a bank is hacked (or someone has an issue), all of your transaction history could become public knowledge. Any event attended, any service paid for, any place frequented is out there. Things done 30 years ago will be revealed. Political party affiliations, employers, and how your money and time are spent.
Just seems like a bad deal... or a way to keep money where it belongs - in the hands of the banks that own it.