Yeah.
This will need to happen.
You cant have hyper inflation with an actual printing press… not now. Just think of the ink costs, nevermind the riots and looting…
It’ll make it easier to pull a Bolivia; just take 3 digits off the end of the dollar.
$1 = $0.1
In all seriousness, they will do this because if they don’t they will lose control of the stable coins.
They can try to regulate stable coins, as an alternative, maybe insist that only banks can provide such instruments due to their oversight, or some crap. But realistically, with a global internet, they have one shot at making the USD CBDC the new reserve currency, and they better not screw it up.
It’s interesting that the USD is already taking over crypto stablecoins without the Fed. 3-5 of the biggest market cap projects are already USD stable coins.
How do you think the Fed will capitalize on the stable coin industry? What makes a Fed CBDC better than USDC? I know USDC was going to offer high yield staking on Coinbase, but that got shutdown. Maybe the future of Treasury Bonds is as the only legal, centralized option for staking digital USD?
As someone with U.S. citizenship, I see the benefit to USD holders of the Fed capitalizing on going digital. Digital USD could be a way for poorer non-U.S. citizens to easily convert their money to USD–a sort of modern capital flight. But it seems this benefit to Americans comes at the cost of hurting non-USD holders/ Americans.
Many libertarian-minded people despise the Treasury Note, but I’m starting to think the Fed does a great job of pushing off their worst of their policies to other countries. Just look at inflation; although USD is inflating, compared to most other currencies the USD is going up. I’m planning a long travel, and part of how I’m going to afford it is by traveling to countries where their fiat is declining. I almost have too many options… The Euro, the Yen, Indian Rupee, Nepali Rupee, Pakistani Rupee, Argentine peso, etc. Is there anywhere that is inflating at a slower rate than USD? Maybe the Swiss Franc, but that is starting to look iffy too.
The reality for first-worlders, especially Americans, is that we face light economic oppression, while being better off than the third worlders who get the worst of it. Privilege means being screwed over less than other people. If cypherpunks really do usher in a new age of economic fair play, maybe we (humans) will be as a whole better off, but the privilege known to nomadic first worlders will decline.
Last question: Is there a currency besides USD that I should hold my stable reserves in?
The last question is easy to answer. Your health is your wealth. Invest in yourself, your family and friends, your security, your quality of life.
But for every person that will take a different form. For me, it’s a sort of sub-suburban homestead, and deep roots here. For you, it might be a fiberglass sailboat, I don’t know.
If it has to be currency, and not assets, I would hold dollars short term, wait for the crash, and then buy into fungible assets like stocks or whatever other b******* you want.
Gold attracts lead. The best bet is a good place to live in a good way to make a living…
Gold attracts lead. The best bet is a good place to live in a good way to make a living…
Yeah man, that’s what I’m trying to figure out. I’m looking for the place to live, but I don’t want to work. I just finished an engineering degree, and the outlooks of what an American engineer does is not fun.
How do you find work you want to do?
I started my own company. I’m not sure I can recommend the experience, but sometimes it allows me to do what I want to do.
Work is when people pay you to do something that they can’t or won’t do… it’s very seldom that will be fun. But if you stand up for yourself, and take pride in your work, then it can be rewarding even when it isn’t what you want to do. Sometimes you just gotta do your chores, tho, or things go to hell.
Invest in what the government can’t print or create more of the currently the money system is inherently flawed. You know quantitative easing is just another way for the government to cause inflation while pretending to be solving the inflation issues.
I started my own company. I’m not sure I can recommend the experience, but sometimes it allows me to do what I want to do.
^This seems like the obvious thing for a problem-solver to invest their time in. Maybe I’ll come back to you in a couple years and ask for your latest thoughts.
Work is when people pay you to do something that they can’t or won’t do… it’s very seldom that will be fun. But if you stand up for yourself, and take pride in your work, then it can be rewarding even when it isn’t what you want to do. Sometimes you just gotta do your chores, tho, or things go to hell.
@Grayman Thanks for the words of wisdom.
At some point there’s going to be a reckoning for the swathes of young Americans, myself included, who don’t want to do our “chores” as you put it. We’ve been fattened up by 2 years of unemployment that paid more than jobs. 2 years ago I landed a prestigious internship, and made less money at that internship than my state offered me from covid unemployment. A lot of people opted to just take the unemployment, which can’t be blamed…
Maybe the introduction of these CBDCs will allow some new-age socialism:
I know people who spent 1-2 years collecting unemployment and blasted it all on weed and booze. Maybe the Fed can continue to sustainably print money and give it to the poor using CBDC-enabled controls. For example, a person gets their $1000 monthly NEETbux, and programmed into the money is the items they can (food, clothing, etc) and can’t (alcohol, cigarettes, etc) buy with it. Then again, I know a guy who traded weed for foodstamps… Lol, pretty based agorism if you ask me.
TerraUSD, a once top 10 by market cap USD stablecoin, just briefly dropped to $0.30 and is currently hovering around $0.50. I bet 10 ERG that when USDT inevitable follows suit, regulation will come quickly behind it.
Quote from the same article: “But the recent settlement of a probe into the most popular stablecoin, tether, shows the need for transparency in the growing industry.”
Regulation of the crypto market is erratic, but it is progressing through the various agencies and the courts.
Development of the USCBDC is proceeding more slowly, more methodically. Today we can use FedNOW, instead of ACH. I intend to research this development in more detail, and participate. It is definitely not a CBDC, but it might provide the infrastructure needed to support such a government service.
As for the notion that the CBDC could not buy you cigarettes or whatever, I’d be ok with that if it was moderated at the point of sale and not by the account of the person - meaning I would want transactions to remain anonymous.
Even though I lean about as far left as a constitutionalist can lean, I am 100% against the income tax, and think it should be replaced by the Fair Tax, which would be a sort of value added tax that could not be avoided by any reseller arrangement.
The current system encourages expensing everything, not just the raw inputs. Major corporations exploit the income/profit based tax laws to expense private jets, private massages, and doughnuts on privates for the finishing move. It’s insane.
The government does not need to know what I make or spend. Taxes should happen at the point of sale, maintaining the anonymity of the buyer, and even the seller (ideally). The tax should be automated.
Some items, like cigarettes, might be taxed differently, but the only way to do that is via government regulation of the producers, distributers, and retailers. That doesn’t disturb me a bit, because those are mostly corporations, and corporations should be subject to scrutiny since they expect limited liability.
Taxes and CBDC need to be solved at the same time.
ETA: I hope the Fed doesn’t think it owes any more allegiance to Visa/Mastercard than they do to Western Union, or Twitter/X for that matter. The 3% tax of the credit cards, for the convenience of swiping some shitty card, or telling my phone about it… is unnerving. Google Pay, Apple Pay, whatever it is all Visa. That is the definition of crazy. This is systemic replacement of cash, and the government and people are willing to watch this blatant crap happen and let Apple argue with Mastercard when Berkshire owns both? While there are free and open source alternatives? Why should those assholes get to charge an extra 3% retail tax worldwide?
Sorry. I’m ranting.