Do you trust the federal government to create digital currency?

[Carhartt]

Back in March, Biden signed an executive order 14067 which would regulate digital assets, including cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is a beautiful thing, because the government can't control and manipulate it. But now Joe wants to change that. Can you name one thing the government has ever done, that was better than the private sector? Joe says he wants to eliminate fraud. Really? Isn't that just precious coming from a Biden?

I heard a money expert talk about the danger of letting the government control digital currency.

Sally goes to the store to buy donuts...

Sally: I'd like to buy a dozen chocolate donuts.

Machine: Sorry, Sally, but you've reached your donut allotment for this month. Come back in December. Have a nice day.

Bob goes to the store to buy a six pack of bud...

Bob: I'll take a six pack of bud.

Machine: Sorry, Bob, but you've used up your beer allotment for this month. Come back in December. Have a nice day.

[abc3643]

You wrote:
"Bitcoin is a beautiful thing, because the government can't control and manipulate it."

Actually, Bitcoin - and all crypto - is an unconstitutional thing. So, Biden's order would help make crypto constitutional.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 5 of the United States Constitution enumerates Congress's "Coinage Power".

The Congress shall have power...
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures;


From ArtI. S8. C5.1 Congress's Coinage Power
constitution.congress.gov/.../

Article I, Section 8, Clause 5:

[The Congress shall have Power. . . ] To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; . . .

Because Article I, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution prohibits the states from coining money,1 the Supreme Court has recognized Congress’s coinage power to be exclusive.2 The Supreme Court has also construed Congress’s power to coin money and regulate the value thereof to authorize Congress to regulate every phase of currency.




==========
Now for a dose of reality...
1. Crypto is anything BUT crypto. If you want to spend money anonymously, use cash.
2. Crypto DOES have central banks. Unregulated central banks.
3. "Why would I want that?" Crypto and NFTs have nothing to do with the real world and have no tangible value.
4. The lack of regulation of the crypto world is one reason why it is collapsing.

Fifth and foremost:
Everybody wonders about the value of Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever as in "My value of Bitcoin is worth _______ dollars."
What they are really saying is that dollars are what count... Dollars buy real things in the real world.
Crypto is horseshit until people start saying "My value of my dollar is worth ___________ Bitcoin."

[abc3643]

You also wrote:

" Can you name one thing the government has ever done, that was better than the private sector?"

Yes.
The US Military - the largest most successful socialist program in human history. Kicking ass for 250 years and counting.
It's the one thing that the Founding Fathers made SURE was not in the private sector.

From the Preamble to the US Constitution:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility,

>>>>> provide for the common defense, <<<<<

promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

[abc3643]

I see we have at least one disagreeing crypto bro...

Oh well. Word of advice: The younger you are, the less you know about human nature and are less inclined to be cautious. Thus, The School of Hard Knocks does most of its instruction to young, inexperienced, idealistic people... people like the disagreeing crypto bro.

Meanwhile...

Three good quotes to this piece by Adam Lashinsky, a former executive editor at Fortune magazine:

TITLE: Why the crypto bubble has finally imploded
By Adam Lashinsky
November 11, 2022 at 11:09 a. m. EST
www.washingtonpost.com/.../

"There’s a critical difference with crypto, though, compared with past bubbles: It had virtually no intrinsic merit."

"But we now know the crop of swaggering financiers who dreamed up the new category of investments casually known as web3 have been kidding themselves."

"Nerds aren’t stupid: If someone offers them oodles of money to chase a fad, they’ll start coding. Hence, crypto."

[abc3643]

From Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in today's New York Times:
Is This the End Game for Crypto?
Nov. 17, 2022, 7:00 p. m. ET
By Paul Krugman
Opinion Columnist

Recent events have made clear the need to regulate crypto, an industry that grew from nothing to a $3 trillion market capitalization a year ago, although most of that has now evaporated. But it also seems likely that the industry couldn’t survive regulation.

The story so far: Crypto reached its peak of public prominence last year, when Matt Damon’s “Fortune favors the brave” commercial — sponsored by the Singapore-based exchange Crypto. com — first aired. At the time Bitcoin, the most famous cryptocurrency, was selling for more than $60,000.

Bitcoin is now trading below $17,000. So people who bought after watching the Damon ad have lost more than 70 percent of their investment. In fact, since most people who bought Bitcoin did so when its price was high, most investors in the currency — around three-quarters of them, according to a new analysis by the Bank for International Settlements — have lost money so far.

Still, asset prices plunge all the time. People who bought stock in Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, at its peak last year have lost around as much as investors in Bitcoin have.

So falling prices needn’t mean that cryptocurrencies are doomed. Crypto boosters surely won’t give up. According to a report from The Washington Post, many of those who subscribed to Twitter Blue Verified, Elon Musk’s disastrous (and now paused) attempt to extract money from Twitter users, were accounts promoting right-wing politics, pornography — and cryptocurrency speculation.

(more)

[abc3643]

More telling than prices has been the collapse of crypto institutions. Most recently, FTX, one of the biggest crypto exchanges, filed for bankruptcy — and it appears that the people running it simply made off with billions of depositors’ money, probably using the funds in a failed effort to prop up Alameda Research, its sister firm.

The question we should ask is why institutions like FTX or Terra, the so-called stablecoin issuer that collapsed in May, were created in the first place.

After all, the 2008 white paper that started the cryptocurrency movement, published under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, was titled “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.” That is, the whole idea was that electronic tokens whose validity was established with techniques borrowed from cryptography would make it possible for people to bypass financial institutions. If you wanted to transfer funds to someone else, you could simply send them a number — a key — with no need to trust Citigroup or Santander to record the transaction.

It has never been clear exactly why anyone other than criminals would want to do this. Although crypto advocates often talk about the 2008 financial crisis as a motivation for their work, that crisis never impaired the payments system — the ability of individuals to transfer funds via banks. Still, the idea of a monetary system that wouldn’t require trust in financial institutions was interesting, and arguably worth trying.

(more)

[abc3643]

After 14 years, however, cryptocurrencies have made almost no inroads into the traditional role of money. They’re too awkward to use for ordinary transactions. Their values are too unstable. In fact, relatively few investors can even be bothered to hold their crypto keys themselves — too much risk of losing them by, say, putting them on a hard drive that ends up in a landfill.

Instead, cryptocurrencies are largely purchased through exchanges like Coinbase and, yes, FTX, which take your money and hold crypto tokens in your name.

These exchanges are — wait for it — financial institutions, whose ability to attract investors depends on — wait for it again — those investors’ trust. In other words, the crypto ecosystem has basically evolved into exactly what it was supposed to replace: a system of financial intermediaries whose ability to operate depends on their perceived trustworthiness.

In which case, what is the point? Why should an industry that at best has simply reinvented conventional banking have any fundamental value?

Furthermore, trust in conventional financial institutions rests in part on validation by Uncle Sam: The government supervises banks, regulates the risks they can take and guarantees many deposits, while crypto operates largely without oversight. So investors must rely on the honesty and competence of entrepreneurs; when they offer exceptionally good deals, investors must believe not just in their competence but in their genius.

(more)

[abc3643]

How has that been working out?

As boosters love to remind us, previous predictions of crypto’s imminent demise have proved wrong. Indeed, the fact that Bitcoin and its rivals aren’t really usable as money needn’t mean that they become worthless — you can, after all, say the same thing about gold.

But if the government finally moves in to regulate crypto firms, which would, among other things, prevent them from promising impossible-to-deliver returns, it’s hard to see what advantage these firms would have over ordinary banks. Even if the value of Bitcoin doesn’t go to zero (which it still might), there’s a strong case that the crypto industry, which loomed so large just a few months ago, is headed for oblivion.

-=-=-=-=-
Paul Krugman has been an Opinion columnist since 2000 and is also a distinguished professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography.

[abc3643]

By the way, @asker should have provided a link to Executive Order 14067 which was issued in 09 MAR 2022.

This link is to that order which is on The White House's website.
TITLE: Executive Order on Ensuring Responsible Development of Digital Assets
www.whitehouse.gov/.../

This fact sheet was published 6 months later in SEP 2022.
FACT SHEET: White House Releases First-Ever Comprehensive Framework for Responsible Development of Digital Assets
www.whitehouse.gov/.../

[WindAtMyBack]

The federal government has had digital currency since digital was invented. It had analog currency before that. That's why cash is roughly only 10% of total money.

Not being regulated is precisely the reason why crypto is not real currency. Not being real currency is the reason why it's tied to and valued by a real currency like USD or Euro. Without being tied to a real currency, crypto would be even more of a mess than it is.

Currency needs to have a value, and it needs to be a known value and stable value. Crypto is not stable. It only has a known value by being tied to real currency. Without that it's completely meaningless. People would be better off with pure barter and direct trading than using crypto with no stability and no ties to real currency.

The US and pretty much the entire world have used digital and analog currency for decades. It's stable, so when you see a gallon of milk for 2 USD or 2 Euro or 300 yen, you know what price you're paying. That's not true with crypto.

[abc3643]

You said it better than I did!

[Aerissa_Jade]

That's the big problem with socialized health care that Democrats want so much.

Is if you have it, then now the government has a reason to control you, using the logic that it helps save tax payer money by making everyone more healthy.

They would love to have digital currency to control people. Imagine it now, automatically taking or garnishing your digital currency for whatever they deem fit.

Could be child support, or taxes or back student loans. So what if you need that for other bills.

Maybe it could work out good... the government take all my money and then THEY can figure out how to pay all my bills and might be like, wait, there isn't enough here 😂😂😂.

I still use cash and love it, cause I don't want everything tracked like how a card is tracked.

[Roxxy99]

Unfortunately, consumers are going to make a transition to digital currency easy for the government. Cashless payment methods have largely been embraced already by society because of the convenience. I’m as guilty as anyone and hardly use cash. Eventually they’ll phase it out to little fanfare, like stores are doing with cashiers.

[BeMuse]

The digital currencies pushed by central banks are meant to place you in a future on par with communist China. If you don't know how it works there, they have expiring money and money is more of a quote voucher system than money. You can't spend it on things you want, you can only spend it on things they let you have up to they item limit they set. If you want want to live under the boot of a totalitarian communist regime that strong integrates Nazi ideas that's the direction you are going.

[BeMuse]

Central banking has to go bye bye...

[BeMuse]

*strongly

[NamerOfStars]

Things the government has done better than the private sector? Sure! Space travel. Roads. Libraries. Rural electrification. And oh, yeah- currency. Private sector currencies and company stores are a huge part of what prompted the labor movement in the first place; I find it disappointing that someone called "Carhartt" doesn't recognize this.

Biden's a monster, but don't let your dislike for him knee-jerk you into thinking that anything else would be better. The danger lies in the concentration of power; whether it's under government or corporate or religious or any other kind of authority doesn't really matter much.

As you've likely noticed, the people screaming to have government-funded healthcare here in the US (without driving prices down first, no less) are generally the same people who insist the government not tell them what do with their bodies (well, as far as abortion'

[NamerOfStars]

's concerned, anyway); they clearly aren't big on thinking things through. That doesn't mean you should do the same.

[Oigit]

No and it does not matter what side of the isle wants to create it. Both parties are bought and sold just as much as the other. So it wouldn't be team red or blue that is creating a digital currency in the first place. It would be the people pulling strings on both sides that create.

[Kiss_Me]

HELL NO!!!

Why would you volunteer to give up freedom?

If the Government controls digital currency it can monitor, regulate, and control everything you buy and sell. It would be bad on SO many levels.

[Looksnicholas]

I wouldn't mind if it started happening all over the world, but I'm not an American, but I'm not bothered by that introduction of digital currency I mean, I don't mind at all.

[exitseven]

the whole idea behind digital currency is that the federal government has no access to any transactions. Having the government have it's own digital currency sort of defeats the purpose.

[Chazmatazz269]

I don’t trust people in government to do anything in anyone’s best interests but their own. If you do, you’re a damn fool.

[Guy13]

Who needs the Bahamas anymore since cryptocurrency. Money 💰 Laundering that even the Oligarchs are jealous of.

[Guy13]

https://youtu.be/vN7o6w-ST_w

[joeldalton]

I trust a 3 am fart after a night of drinking and taco bell more than I trust the government. Anyone who is not a complete fucking idiot should be against digital currency.

[Avicenna]

It’s obvious what the goal is. Wonderful regime we have there.

[dustybiker]

😭 Manipulating my ability to hide money. Yup.

[Revvl]

Hell no! Let the private sector manage digital currency.

[jamesgoldman]

I don't trust digital currency full stop

Cash is king

[Cedman]

I mean while lose cashless society happens in China. While merchant fees need to be payed Chinese government will pay that as is let's these keep tabs on what the citizen are buying.

[ChiTown33]

As much as I trust the internet to Regulate itself.

[Surely]

Electronic money today. Account hacked tomorrow! Poof!!!

[abc3643]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DT7bX-B1Mg

[boobliker]

yes! as much as you can trust any government?

[AngryCarl]

I wouldn't even trust the banks to create a digital currency.

[Pudsmucker]

No they have no business in creating a new currency.

[Pterodon]

Nope

[Carhartt]

They would be able to push a button and turn your money off. You better vote for the right person, and only say good things about the government on social media.