Ask HN: Would you use Bitcoins backed by the US Treasury?

8 points·stevewilhelm··7 comments

I am wondering, it is possible for the US Treasury to start a Bitcoin Network using an Alternative Chain [1]?

If they could and they backed each of their Bitcoins with the full faith and credit of one dollar, would you buy them?

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alternative_chain#Handling_your_new_block_chain

Wouldn't the US Treasury backing them kind of take away from the decentralized nature? Obviously it wouldn't be printing more money, but I appreciate how it operates outside of a government.

It would be really nice to send a dollar to a friend quickly and without any fee. Like cash, but electronic.

The current banking system has a built-in interest in preventing the existence of this kind of currency, so this kind of change would have to be propelled by government. It isn't likely that the Bitcoin community would be excited, but the rest of us would be.

Of course, they can't get healthcare.gov to work, so...

They wouldn't need to start their own chain. The treasury can simply declare that they will always buy Bitcoins at $1.

Another question to ask is if such a government backed system is deflationary like Bitcoin, of if they would engineer it so that can still perform quantitative easing.

The most attractive feature of bitcoins is that they are NOT associated with the US Govt. (Or any other.)

Why would these bitcoins be better? What would they be protecting you from?

The would be protecting you from the volatility of the price of Bitcoin.

I propose that the value of the Fed's eDollar would be tied to the value of a paper dollar. This isn't a "mined coin", rather the Fed would issue eDollars the way it issues paper dollars.

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