The digital dollar has been here for years. I couldn't even tell you the last time I carried paper currency.
Numbers in a retail bank's ledger are not digital dollars. They represent an obligation of the bank, and not direct ownership of dollars.
Digital dollars exist, but only banks can hold them, as they're the only ones with accounts at the central bank. The rest of us use retail bank accounts, which are the equivalent of custodial wallets in the crypto world.
The term "dollar" encompasses central bank money (including but not limited to banknotes) as well as private money.
> Numbers in a retail bank's ledger are not digital dollars
Yes, they very much are. Modern money creation is public-private and only semi-centralized.
With dollars, individuals have to choose between bank accounts, which are subject to counterparty risk, and cash, which cannot be transacted digitally.
If your holding of 'digital dollars' in a bank account is subject to counterparty risk, then there's something different about the dollars you hold and 'real' dollars issued by the central bank.
With cryptocurrency, anyone can transact the real thing. There's no counterparty risk. (Of course, there are issues with blockchain scaling, use of custodial wallets etc., which negate this to some extent.)
This only holds true if there was only one cryptocurrency in the world and everyone used self-custody. As soon as you have multiple cryptocurrencies and multiple networks and multiple wallet providers, you have counterparty risk.
Coinbase may not disappear, but others may. Similar for Bitcoin etc. etc.
I said 'anyone can', not 'everyone does'.
> "disappear, but others may. Similar for Bitcoin"
The risk of the bitcoin blockchain disappearing, and your BTC holdings thereby becoming worthless, is not an instance of counterparty risk.
Not so with your so-called digital dollars.
An actual digital dollar would have no transaction fee whatsoever.
So, something BTC is unable to provide?
The CC network charge vendors a percentage of the transaction. So you aren't paying directly, but we're all paying.
The credit card terminal agreements signed by retailers prevent the retailer from offering differential pricing when buying via credit card or cash. Essentially, the credit card fee is embedded into the price.
This might be "good" for people who have credit cards, but it is inflationary (by roughly 2%) to people whose credit is poor and only transact by cash.
But let's be honest -- who cares about the poor?