Clearly a joke, shame that few understand the irony.
This hypothetical system would allow debits and credits to be settled electronically at very low transaction costs and could be scaled to billions of transactions, and anyone could participate in such a system by spending 10 minutes and opening a free "checking account" at a local credit union.
> The Fed would create a new blockchain called Fedcoin. Or it might create a Ripple style ledger by the same name.
Do they not realize that if a central bank or any other entity wanted to create a convenient electronic currency system that is publicly accessible, it would be much simpler for them to just set up a boring old webservice with a REST API?
With an efficient implementation, the amount of hardware required to replicate a Bitcoin level of transactions is miniscule.
Cowards, who want to find technological solutions to social problems.
Crazies who are terrified that Satan will take over the Fed and decide to suddenly make dollars worthless, and in the process destroy the county.
And of course criminals who use it to buy drugs.
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Luckily we know better, that assuming you are one of the technical 1% who can keep your wallet from being hacked, you can (for a little extra money in conversion costs) use bitcoin to shop at overstock.com.
A joke on the public, by the public.