Elon Musk Pushes Forward Integrating the U.S. Treasury with Blockchain | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk Pushes Forward Integrating the U.S. Treasury with Blockchain

news.bitcoinprotocol.org

20 pointsLopRabbit12 comments

The interesting bit is not blockchain, but "Every transaction, every dollar spent, would be recorded publicly and securely, creating an immutable record that citizens can trust and scrutinize, which cannot be tampered with."

I'm not sure any government could function with this level of transparency. Just benign stuff like government employee paychecks would be problematic.

The source is a brief Twitter exchange. No practical details have been provided in regards to an actual implementation. This could mean anything from a full CBDC implementation to an interdepartmental ledger. They've teased a 500 word article out of mere speculation.

Interesting to consider the possibilities.

> Interesting to consider the possibilities.

Having watched cryptocurrency for the past 10 years, my main consideration is fraud.

In this case at least, the concern would be in preventing government fraud.

1. A ledger is less fraud-resistant than a budget, since the only thing stopping a ledger from lying is bureaucratic drudgery.

2. The United States dollar is not a crypto-native currency and therefore requires constant (and fallible) accounting, a-la a checkbook.

3. If you can't use your preexisting control to prevent the government from defrauding you, then adding more red tape will not reduce spending.

Musk can't stop cryptocurrencies from using their ledgers for fraud. It's an inherent limitation of the system that rational economists have been warning about for years. Relying on it to increase government transparency is an implementation failure that reflects on the profound stupidity or illegal ambitions of the people putting it in place.

There's nothing in it that prevents fraudulent resale of equipment or fraudulent billing to contractors. Nor would it prevent million dollar research grants for "Prawns on Treadmills". The question of fraud is almost irrelevant when you consider the scale of wasteful spending.

At the extreme end of native payments it could be useful in preventing fraud or even waste by transparently and publicly tracking all transactions. In this example all expenditures, including salaries would be paid with the blockchain. Public keys would need to be mapped to organizations and individuals. The public would no longer need to ask permission to examine matters of the public record.

However, I'm not in favor of a full on CBDC approach. There are too many moral hazards in absolute state control. The privacy implications are also troublesome.

All of this is a bit of over analysis when you understand the context of the Tweet in question. Mario is one of the most popular "Twitter Spaces" hosts. He wants to bill cryptocurrency projects for time on his program. Elon sometimes appears on his program for PR purposes. There is a synergy between the two. They both have an incentive to feed each other. The author just wants clicks.

As I said in my first concise comment, there's no real substance here.

> The question of fraud is almost irrelevant when you consider the scale of wasteful spending.

Which is why an itemized ledger is pointless! If you want to adjust the spending of a government organization, adjust their budget. Make them justify the $2,000 toilet seat for the B-21, because there are people in America who will gladly run the materials science by you if you're not aware. America cares about the sticker price, centralized planning is the commie playbook.

Using a blockchain for government spending is a masturbatory nerd impulse that will be quickly dismantled if it even reaches approval, let alone serious adoption.

The amount of unneccessary, self-imposed damage being done to the US right now is absolutely staggering.

It's the game plan. Destroy, privatize, and profit while taking more money from We the People while delivering less and making the country fundamentally weaker in immeasurable ways.

The Dept of Defense has failed many audits in a row. No one really has a handle on what money is going for there, or at may other departments.

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4992913-pentagon-fails-7t...

Situation: We trust the government to publish a transparent budget to 14 different auditors

"14?! What a waste of time! We need to develop one universal ledger so the government can never lie to us again!"

[Soon] Situation: We trust the government to publish a transparent budget to 15 different auditors

DoD is a disaster area but government isn't a uniform hive mind. Some parts operate better than others, and some are more critical than others.

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