l'articolo pubblicato due giorni fa sul WALL STREET JOURNAL è stato scritto da due persone molto smart RASKIN - YERMACK
QUASI TUTTE LE BANCHE CENTRALI STANNO STUDIANDO L'INTRODUZIONE DI DIGITAL CURRENCIES (CHE POSSONO ESSERE SCAMBIATE TRAMITE BLOCKCHAIN O LORO SURROGATE )
VANTAGGI E SVANTAGGI SONO ELENCATI QUA DI SEGUITO NELL'ARTICOLO ...OVVIAMENTE IL TIPO DI DIGITAL CURRENCIES CHE POTREBBERO VENIRE INTRODOTTE POTREBBERO AVERE UN GRADO DI CONTROLLO SICURAMENTE SUPERIORE A QUELLO DEL CONTANTE E QUESTO E' DI PER SE UN MALE. INFATTI L'UOMO DOVREBBE ESSERE LIBORO DA CONTROLLI PER ESPRIMERSI AL MEGLIO, SPECIE SE IL CONTROLLORE E' IN DIFFICOLTA' E TIENE ALTO IL LIVELLO DI BUROCRAZIA, INEFICIENZA E TASSE.
Ma dobbiamo prendere atto delle novita' e cercare di cavalcarle nel bene e nel male, non ci si deve far guidare ..ma dobbiamo essere noi a guidare il processo
The Wall Street Journal has published an Op-Ed - authored by two NYU professors: Max Raskin and David Yermack - on the
subject of the digitalization of currency. The strawman offers several
pros and cons to a 'world without cash'
Raskin and Yermack begin: The Federal Reserve has done almost nothing to study how a digital currency might work...
Central bankers throughout the world, from Canada to Ireland, have
recently indicated that they might issue digital currency in the future.
Yet the U.S. has been absent from the debate. As the world’s central
monetary power, America should play a leading role in studying the
benefits and pitfalls of a digital-currency future. While plenty of risks would come with such a conversion, the potential perks are so great that it merits serious consideration.
What would a government-backed digital currency look like? A
country’s central bank would need to become a deposit-taking
institution and hold accounts on behalf of citizens and businesses. All
of their debits would be tracked on the central bank’s blockchain, a
digital ledger resistant to tampering. The central bank would pay
interest electronically by adjusting the balances of depositor accounts.
While the current system of physical notes and bills could be continued
in parallel, it would likely wind down over time.
Though such a system seems relatively simple, implementation wouldn’t be easy. In “Digital Currencies, Decentralized Ledgers, and the Future of Central Banking,”
a new paper prepared for a forthcoming research anthology on central
banking, we analyze potential costs and benefits of a sovereign digital
currency.
There are plenty of advantages. The government would
save nearly $1 billion annually by not having to print, store,
transport and safeguard physical currency. Tax collection would become
much simpler, and tax evasion and money laundering could become
prohibitively difficult. Depositors would no longer have to rely on
commercial banks to hold their checking accounts, and the government
could get out of the risky deposit-insurance business. Commercial banks
that wished to keep making loans would raise long-term capital in the
debt and equity markets, ending the mismatch between demand deposits and
long-term loans that can cause liquidity problems.
Central banks would be able to expand credit and control
the monetary system without the need for commercial banks to
intermediate. The central bank could more easily adjust its monetary
policy, because it would have the ability to target specific accounts.
For example, the Fed could loosen monetary policy only in economically
depressed regions of the country, or for certain depositors, such as
senior citizens.
Yet the centralization of banking under this system would
also create a Leviathan with the power to monitor and control the
personal finances of every citizen in the country. This is
one of the chief reasons why many are loath to give up on hard currency.
With digital money, the government could view any financial transaction
and obtain a flow of information about personal spending that could be
used against an individual in a whole host of scenarios. In other words,
it would be virtually impossible to hide money under your mattress. But
creating and respecting privacy firewalls and rethinking legal-tender
laws could mitigate the dangers of monopoly and stifled competition in
currency markets.
Implementation would probably create the toughest problems. Today
bitcoin and other digital currencies are mostly used by relatively
affluent men between the ages of 19 and 44. Not all citizens would be
comfortable switching to a virtual currency, and the poor and
computer-illiterate would be most vulnerable to being left behind. To
accommodate these users, the U.S. Mint could place a digital token in
each newly issued dollar bill, with a cryptographic key embedded in a
hologram to enable digital tracking on the central bank’s blockchain.
Such physical manifestations of digital currency already exist in the
bitcoin market and would allow individuals to participate in a scheme of
digital currency without having to change their behavior.
However, a transition to digital currency might come at a
large cost for the U.S. in particular, because the dollar remains the
world’s de facto reserve currency. The U.S. collects enormous
seigniorage revenue that accrues to the economy when the Federal Reserve
prints dollars that are exported abroad in exchange for foreign goods
and services. These bank notes ultimately end up in countries with less
reliable central banks where locals prefer to hold U.S. currency instead
of their own. Forfeiting this franchise as the world’s reserve currency
might be too costly, as the U.S. currency held abroad exceeds half a
trillion dollars, according to reliable estimates. Unless it is prepared
to take deposits from people all over the world who are looking for
safe havens, the Fed might sit on the sidelines and watch other
countries take the lead in replacing their physical money with digital.
Despite its shortcomings, would this system make sense for the U.S.? With less physical currency being used every year, the Federal Reserve would be negligent not to consider the possibilities. The
march of digital commerce may eventually make the benefits seem
overwhelming, and it would be wise to be ahead of the game rather than
trying to catch up at the last minute.
* * *
So, while carefully worded, it seems the authors
recognize that digital dollars are an asset only to heightened Federal
government tyranny... and yet believe this idea should be pursued?
At the rate that American taxpayer cash is heading to Tehran, perhaps a shift to a digital currency does make sense?
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