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Comment by williamtrask | Hacker News Reader

I find it intriguing that this kind of project will plausibly be the true legacy of the crypto community’s efforts. This is both ironic and tragic as their intentions were the opposite in the wake of the 2008 crash.

I think it’s also related to the lack of trained political scientists in the crypto movement. A first year undergrad is taught that real political power comes from whomever has a monopoly on violence. In this light crypto was always doomed to fail in this way. It had little to no affect on the underlying real power. It only worked 1 later up (monetary supply / taxation / etc.).

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What does the crypto community have to do with this? A CBDC isn't even a cryptocurrency, and has no connection to them at all.

Programmable money, even though it's centralized.

Also known as a "bank account"?

Money in my bank account cannot have an expiry date, which is something that would be possible with this new digital currency. The bank cannot limit where I can spend it, at least not as easily.

To be clear, that's a tremendous concern, but it doesn't have any connection to crypto. The reason that the money in your bank account can't expire is because if a private bank tried to do that, it would trigger a bank run - everyone would withdraw their funds as paper, or transfer them to a different bank. The reason the CBDC is different is because there cannot be a run on a central bank as the issuer of currency, and it alone can assert that its unit of account is a legal replacement for paper banknotes. So it can establish policies like an 'expiry date' for deposited funds, which a private bank could not (at least, not until the central bank does first).

Banks certainly can limit where you spend your money though - again, with the exception of cash withdrawals.

Your original point of contention was that CBDC isn't even a cryptocurrency. It is presumably using the tech that was built by the crypto community, like smart contracts.

Why would you presume that? I think it's much more likely to use the same tech that banks and credit cards use for their own bookkeeping. "Money with an expiry date" is in line with line-of-credit products that banks already offer, and taken to its continuous limit, is simply a negative interest rate.

Because they are already talking about it.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2021/03/25/as-programmable-...

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/what...

There's no need for them to use smart contracts. Why would you need a self-enforcing contract if you're the guy with monopoly on violence who's enforcing everything in the first place? Smart contracts are an attempt to solve the issue of decentralized trust; this is literally the opposite, an attempt at hyper-centralization.

This seems odd to me. The "money" you have in your bank is already purely digital, a fiction. It's not as if you go to and from the bank carrying physical notes and leave them in a box you control.

If your government wants to take away "your" money, they clearly have the technical ability to do it by compelling the bank to freeze your assets. Likewise, that bank you are currently trusting so much could readily shave a couple of zeros off your balance.

There is absolutely nothing technological stopping any of this.

For the shared fiction of "ownership" of intangible assets to work, we are all at the mercy of one thing: the rule of law.

Certain people have been pushing for digital money for decades, since long before Bitcoin was invented. Bitcoin was the culmination of a quest to find an alternative to that future that was already developing, not the inspiration for that future.

The legacy of the crypto community is the Bitcoin blockchain. Blocks are still being appended. It will outlast this instrument of financial oppression, as well as the UK itself.

> The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

If you need an undergraduate course to explain that a monopoly on violence is what bestows power to a group, you probably aren't a scheming mastermind who is going to rework all of the systems of society.

You may be surprised. Smart people can be easily tripped up by small oversights. But that won't end their hubris that motives them to try it.

Government is the monopoly on legitimate violence [In the US defensive violence* is also legitimate by the public, but gov holds monopoly on initiating violence]. They are a laughable distance from monopoly on all violence in their jurisdiction.

* As noted below, defensive violence against illegitimate initiators of violence [<- edit]

How does that work if you're held at gunpoint by law enforcement? Even if you know you've done nothing wrong, and are e.g. a victim of systemic racism?

There are lots of minorities that have chosen to shoot back on the way out when they know they're going to be gunned down. It still holds the government can't possibly own all the violence.

Violence in self-defense against imminent physical harm is legal in most of the world, although proportionality requirements vary.

Because the crypto space are just scammers. They barely know anything

People working on Bitcoin are very aware of this and it has been extensively discussed this in the last 10 years and taken into account even by Satoshi

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