IMF says central bank digital currencies can replace cash | Hacker News Reader

IMF says central bank digital currencies can replace cash

cnbc.com

18 pointslsllc12 comments

We are currently at the point where there are very few people whose bank accounts are canceled because a system has detected something unusual. The bank is legally obliged to investigate this, so they close the accounts and absolutely nobody seems to know the exact reason. And now let's make this completely digital. What could possibly happen?!

> Georgieva also said that artificial intelligence “could amplify some of the benefits of CBDCs” by providing accurate credit scoring ... Demand for generative AI has boomed following the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT ... providing rapid, accurate credit scoring based on various data.

Might not be the best weekend to sell cashless transaction data mining and ChatGPT computation of social credit scores for human ranking.

What could possibly go wrong…

CBDCs are fine, but not as the “solution to everything” that is getting pushed by the IMF.

Cash and barter economies are literally the core of freedom from tyrannical forces, and in the era of AI, the last thing any of us should want is our economies managed by a single ledger under one real-time system with unproven and intrinsically vulnerable centralized control.

Resilience to AI powered disruption looks like diversity in the economic realm, not low cost streamlined centrally managed systems.

Have they learned absolutely nothing from the Internet?

These same mindsets are shared by those who seek to put the internet under centralised control. Technocrats are digital autocrats. I don't like the idea of an unelected, unaccountable organisation having the ability to switch off people's money. It would be an extreme amount of power in today's economy, let alone a cashless society.

Canada has shown us that governments are willing to put the financial clamps on people due to political disagreements.

93% of reserve banks are investigating CBDCs. Anyone remember the conspiracy theory about a one world currency, and the financial stranglehold that would entail?

What about a quantum computer breaking the encryption system of the digital currency of an entire continent, is this a sensible scenario?

1. post quantum cryptography algorithms are being developed

2. the current banking system is already effectively broken. Baddies can forge banknotes and can social engineer financial institutions to perform fraudulent transactions. Despite that we have measures to keep such activities under control. I don't see why this can't be extended to CBDCs.

Nevertheless, the world isn’t sloshing with forged banknotes.

If they’re all based on blockchain, won’t this hugely slow down transaction speed? Right now paying by visa involves a tiny message to my bank where it goes “yeah ok” to the sale. One would think if they’re going to invoke a digital ledger, then this will have to be computed on every single transaction. I can’t see that being done quickly on billions of transactions a day.

IMF NFT but for world leaders only

No way in hell.

Gross

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