Comment by fsociety999 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fsociety999 | Hacker News Reader

Everyone should be opposed to a central bank digital currency. If you think tracking and censorship is bad now with tech companies, wait until the Government can control your access to money and cut off access to the financial system for any or no reason. Not only that, but the surveillance capabilities will be better than even George Orwell could have envisioned. Imagine if your wallet is restricted so you can only spend money at certain locations on certain days or times.

I am aware that technically the Federal Reserve is not part of the Government, but the reality is that they are ABOVE it which is even scarier. They are not accountable to the people via elections or any other means.

I do not know how they intend to spin this as a positive for society, but I am sure they will come up with something. Perhaps they will say that it makes it more easier to track down terrorists and criminals, or that it is necessary because Bitcoin mining uses a lot of energy, or that it is necessary to control Russia, but make no mistake, this is and will be an attack on regular working class people.

A US CBDC would likely be a private / public partnerships. They know that a government monitored account would never pass. The Fed will issue the currency and the banks (possibly thin banks) will manage the accounts. Normal means for law enforcement to gain history will be put in place.

In other words, it will work pretty much like it does now --- except transactions won't necessarily need to run through 3rd party gatekeepers (banks/Visa/Mastercard) and can be P2P instead --- straight from my digital wallet to yours.

Those who argue against digital currency are too late --- most of the economy already runs on digital transactions.

I would expect these to be permissioned systems, so it will still be going ng through 3rd parties. The govt is not going to have the population using non-custodial wallets. There will be no mining or staking.

Look at the studies that have been done by the Federal Reserve.

Their plans include digital wallets --- with credentials created and assigned by a bank partner but with the ability to be used P2P without any permission required --- just like cash.

I assume this would involve a 2FA type security setup. A friend could transfer money to you using just your account ID to create and send you a transaction token.

But to mug someone, you would need to not only take possession of their phone but also obtain their wallet authorization key. The mugger could then access only what is currently stored in the wallet.

...wait until the Government can control your access to money and cut off access to the financial system for any or no reason.

So a CBDC will suspend the Constitution and due process?

Wow! Scary.

Just wait until we have money that expires

To be fair, that feature would help eliminate corruption.

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