Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Establishment Insider: The Federal Reserve and the People's Bank of China Are Going To Digitize Their Currencies

It's pretty obvious that at some point the government is going to attempt to make a run on our physical cash. It is only a matter of time and some establishment operators are already openly talking about it.

The Consensus 2016 conference, a blockchain technology summit, wrapped up today in New York City.  Of note, it was co-hosted by Digital Currency Group.

DCG is a very powerful insider group. It is an investment firm focused on bitcoin and blockchain startups. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers recently became an adviser to the firm. Western Union is an investor, along with major Silicon Valley venture capital firms.

It makes sense to pay attention to what the players at this firm see developing.

At the conference, according to CNBC, DCG  CEO Barry Silbert predicted that the U.S. Federal Reserve and the People's Bank of China will seek to digitize their current fiat currencies, issuing something akin to RMB-coin, or dollar-coin.

"There's going to be an important distinction between central banks' coins and bitcoin," Silbert said Monday. "They're certainly not going to cap the output."

That is, Bitcoin is doomed and government central banks will be running the key digital currencies.

Summers, who was also at the conference, put an exclamation point on that (via CNBC):
Summers also attempted to dash any hopes that bitcoin — which has been embraced by some pro-anarchism communities — could create anything like "a libertarian paradise." In fact, he said that existing laws about cross-border money transfers will "for sure, for sure, for sure" be changed to cover virtual currency.
These players know what is coming. Digital currencies  will come under the purview of the government and become a method by which all spending and investments will be tracked.

Silbert didn't even attempt to hide the fact that central banks will be able to print digital money at will and will also be able to track transactions of all individuals who use such digital coins.

 CNBC again:
There are a wide range of benefits for central banks ranging from tracking money's velocity and its usage to easier issuance of stimulus "helicopter" money, sources said...
Silbert added that central banks' digital currencies, which he characterized as a likely outcome (if not virtual certainty), are "only going to enhance the government's ability to see what you're doing."
 -RW

7 comments:

  1. Everything comes under the purview of government. That's why we need classical liberals in power. Anarchism is not a shortcut. We just get ruled by tyrants.

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    1. Yep, try to find a classical liberal. Especially one who would want to be in power - and would be able to resist the siren call of forcing others to do what he thinks is right.

      Classical liberalism is an unstable condition due to its inherent self-contradiction. Those who are not firm on the NAP quickly evolve into full-blown statists when given even a modicum of power, those who have the intellectual integrity to follow the NAP become voluntarists/ancaps.

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  2. I don't truly believe that Bitcoin was ever a "private" effort. I think it was shadow op and case study focusing on psychology, marketability, functionality, etc. It, being considered a success, is merely the basis for government roll-outs of their own "coins".

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  3. Making money electronic will have an effect of making alternative electronic currencies so much more acceptable to the general public. Bitcoin is not the end of it, and there *are* designs for electronic currency which are both fully anonymous and decentralized.

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  4. I welcome my new free market bartering overlords!

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  5. We're a far way off from this. Democrats lose their shit now saying people are "disenfranchised" if they are required to show an ID to vote. If these people think they've got the political will to force the government-dependent, underground economy Democrat voters to go to a cashless, traceable currency they've got another thing coming.

    Hopefully for the rest of us the monetary overlords shoot their wads prematurely and face political backlash from the right and the left. If they are smart they wait a generation, cook up some BS that terrorists are using untraceable hard money to build their networks and convince the post-millenial wimps to abandon cash. I guess it's just as good for them to try and fail once or twice knowing each try weakens the resistance to change.

    Walter Block will have to start a new group: Libertarians for Physical Fiat Money

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