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Comment by ripvanwinkle | Hacker News Reader

I am trying to understand what new scenarios a digital currency from India or any government unlock that are not possible today.

Is it that if i wanted to pay someone I could just skip the intermediate credit card / google pay/ bank account and just send money p2p.

love to learn more here.

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Gov-supported digital currencies would mostly streamline things and replace existing bloated and slow programs. Imagine the current stimulus situation – instead of sending checks to people they could just press a button and immediately send credit to all citizens that have a certain account threshold or income rate. Currency units could be earmarked for certain retailers (i.e. food stamps, education, etc).

Press a button and instantly deduct a new tax from my bank account as well.

It's just a mandatory account in a National Bank[1] for everyone. With a debit card or an app in the phone, it's almost as good. The real question is why they need a new currency instead of using the current one?

[1] I don't know the name. Here in Argentina we have a "National Bank", and also the "Central Bank" that is somewhat like the Federal Reserve, and a few other national banks that are privatized and nationalized back from time to time. Also each Province has it's own bank. (And there are also private banks.)

There is no need to send checks to people unless it’s required for keeping records or purposes beyond money transfer. India has quite an advanced banking system where quite a large sum of money can be transferred in mere seconds or in several minutes round the clock anytime of the year from any bank to any other bank.

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