The IMF is slowly pushing for digital currencies to replace cash
imf.org
imf.org
Also is anyone having trouble scrolling the page on mobile? It seems to want to jump everywhere except the place I want it to.
If you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
I know it sounds like an arbitrary rule, and I agree that it has some disadvantages, but if we didn't have it, HN would be quite a different place. Titles are by far the biggest influence on threads. Allowing the submitter to put their own point of view in the title would give them special control over the discussion. We want the starting point of discussions here to be more neutral than that.
You can and should criticize the IMF for their neoliberalist economic policies that open the gates for foreign extractive businesses, but that's a policy discussion and not a technological one. If the goal was surveillance and authoritarianism then you can do that just as well with existing payment infrastructure that doesn't use cryptography as extensively as a proposed CBDC would.
It's mentioned frequently in research papers posted by central banks, as a way to effectively allow interest rates to drop below zero. Otherwise, this would incentivize people to stuff cash under their mattresses.
People write research papers about all sorts of things. Omnipresent AI video surveillance of every square inch on Earth would probably have some benefits, but it’s politically unpalatable anywhere outside of a few countries.
The central banks, though, are the ones who actually implement the mechanics of the CBDC, even though policymakers are the ones who authorize it. And it's likely that unless policymakers are especially wonkish about those implementation details, they will defer to the central bank's research and recommendations, in terms of how it should be implemented, once the policymakers have decided that they want the central bank to introduce a CBDC.
Even before bitcoin and after bitcoin, private banks create/destroy digital currency: they create digital money when new loans are created, and destroy digital money when loans are paid. When people receive paychecks through ACH direct deposits, it is all about moving bits around various accounts, no creation or destruction of physical currency involved. With CBDC, tokens need to be verified with some kind of entity, wallets are needed to store these tokens. What difference does it make now, when one doesn't need to deal with the hassle of opening accounts with private banks?
You don’t have privacy with banknotes. Try coins.
Do you have some more information to read about how paper money flows are traced?
Source: https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/063/2023/011/arti...
it's a way of central banks taking back control of the currency system from mastercard/paypal/yourbank/etc.
there should be no reason we need banks to conduct basic tasks which are increasingly digital only.
irrc, proposals do not include any mechanism to reliably associated transactions over time with an individual's identity.
if implemented it would increase privacy, as it would deprive banks/online middlement/etc. from having your transaction hisotry
which is usually trivially accessible by law enforcement anyway
the 'they' who flip switches are more company boards, rather than public democratic institutions of western liberal states
for them to implement anything other than published papers on the system, it would require a conspiracy -- one unjustified given how trivial it is to monitor people anyway
I am not aware of a single CBDC that is anonymous. Do you have a source for this claim?
The middlemen are going to fight this to the very end, even if they have to resort to dirty tactics. It's no wonder that so much misinformation has cropped up on these in the last few years.