In 1991, I attended a conference on the status and details of the implementation of the new Euro.
Sat 10 feet from the head of the European Central Bank as he gave an overview of the progress and status. Remember when he entered the back of the room, back doors swung open and in he came with two huge bodyguards on either side. They stood on either side of him as he spoke. You could tell they were packing serious firepower under their jackets, just like secret service guys.
At lunch that day, sat at a table for 6 that included the head of the Dallas FED, a French finance minister type, and 3 others. Discussions were of the enormous complexity of changing all banking IT infrastructure, retail infrastructure, currency and stock exchanges, etc. and the enormous effort and complexity of the testing and coordination that was required.
Here’s a simple example of why’s that is all needed:
You walk into a Taco bell and want to buy a taco. You have 5 JoeCoins in your phone crypto account. You order the taco and when you tell the cashier you want to pay in JoeCoins, she gives you a blank look. You explain what JoeCoins are. She says “Oh, I heard about that from my friend.” You think “Awesome, I’m getting my taco.” Then she says her point of sale register can’t accept JoeCoins, there is no button to specify she is accepting JoeCoins and to get them from you.
NO TACO!
but you can pay with a “credit card”. here’s just one example...there’s a bunch of them:
you can also instantly sell crypto on your phone (ie, convert it to “real money”), and send it to your bank account if you want to do that. but you don’t have to, see card above and more like them.
it’s no different from buying stuff in europe today with your dollars
and outside of the retail context, you can text anyone money without the use of a bank/intermediate. that’s a real plus for people in countries with crap currencies.
This is why all these hobbyist coins will never be used widely used and the only ones that will be used are the ones blessed by central banks and huge money center banks and fortune 500 consortiums. They coins must be able to scale for transaction rates in the hundreds of billions of transactions per day. They have to be known in all the major IT infrastructures.
Plus they have to have enough liquidity to buy or selling big amounts does not drive the price up or down by double digits. They have to easily hedgeable for cross currency risk.