Posted on 03/25/2022 2:27:41 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller on Friday played down the functionality of cryptocurrencies while again expressing his skepticism about adopting a central bank digital currency when consumers already have access to fast payment systems.
“These things aren’t payment instruments at all,” Waller said of cryptocurrencies during a virtual panel on central bank digital currencies. “My view is these things are just electronic gold. They're forms of storage carrying wealth across time. Look at art, look at baseball cards. Look at all of this stuff that's intrinsically useless that people pay a lot of money and hold on to because they think they can sell it later and get their money back.”
The Fed governor also thinks blockchain isn’t all that useful right now. “I think Blockchain is totally overrated,” he said. “The question is is it the most efficient way to do stuff? We know distributed ledger blockchain is one way of doing transactions and record keeping, but it’s not efficient.”
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
I’m OK with that categorization.
Nope, we’re no threat at all to existing institutions.
We’ll just keep trading our electronic gold and digital beanie babies, pay no attention to us.
Ping
“We know distributed ledger blockchain is one way of doing transactions and record keeping, but it’s not efficient.”
The point is not to be efficient. It’s to make transactions permissionless, uncensorable, and irrevocable.
Pennies are just zinc gold.
Oh wait, did I just turn zinc into gold. I must have the Philosopher's Stone.
If the blockchain method isn’t sufficiently efficient then digital currency can be a store of wealth, but it won’t be useful for day-to-day transactions.
What is a “Federal Reserve Governor”??
Do you mean the consensus method?
ETH is converting to Proof of Stake this year, and BTC will convert to it at some point, too.
All of the EVM-competitors and legitimate alt-chains are PoS as well.
When I say “legitimate alt-chains”, I exclude those that are too centralized to be permissionless.
There are 12 Federal reserve banks through out the U.S. Richmond, NY, etc.
Each has a governor.
Look at your currency to see which Federal reserve bank circulated that Benjamin.
5.56mm
PoS: Very unfortunate acronym.
The functionality is in the blockchain, as much if not more than in the currency. Blockchain has many other uses (such as record keeping of all kinds of transactions) other than just being used to track commercial transactions.
Blockchain currencies (cryptos) has potential to reduce transaction costs greatly. If I own a store and you use your Visa card, Visa takes around 3% of the charge plus 30 cents. Eats away especially on small purchases but the 3% is huge on larger transactions too. On a blockchain the costs are pennies no matter how large or small the transaction. This is one main reason why the banks don’t like it.
Imagine if you don’t need deeds or registrar recorders or DMV files ad nauseam. It can theoretically all be recorded on a blockchain and put a lot of bureaucracies - public and private - out of work.
If the CB and the US ever goes to a digital currency you will lose any freedom we know today. The government (bureaucrats) will completely control everything you do and you will conform or your crypto will be seized or withheld. You will have to take the shots they say you must, you will have to live where they say and eat what they say will improve your health. Sounds far fetched, but just look at what has happened the last few years. If you think the government wouldn’t use the power of digital currency control to control you then you haven’t been paying attention.
M Kehoe - thank you.
Haha... unfortunate, but it’s what we’ve got.
“Not efficient” means cannot print at will.
Gold is not “efficient” either.
China should be an early adopter as a way to monitor individual lives.
“They’re forms of storage carrying wealth across time. Look at art, look at baseball cards. Look at all of this stuff that’s intrinsically useless that people pay a lot of money and hold on to because they think they can sell it later and get their money back.”
Wow, this guy is either totally clueless or intentionally deceitful. The time is coming where the world bank will decide what transactions you are allowed to make. Need ammo? Too bad. The banks will decide not to process the transaction. Want to donate to a cause you believe in? Too bad, the bank doesn’t believe in it and wont process the transaction. Decentralized currency is about freedom. Don’t be fooled by bank propaganda.
I don’t think bitcoin will ever change to PoS. If it does it will cease to be Bitcoin.
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Yep. Totalitarianism means total control.
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