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Is this basic... or am I basic?
10 sats \ 2 comments \ @02fa90fd41 12 Jul 2023 bitcoin
I don't understand why people fear digital currencies. Not all the money in the world is printed or minted. The banks use algorithms and most value is stored on a 1 or 0 in a bank system somewhere.
Paper and metal, used to be gems and shells, and before that probably anything that people traded. Its a tangible thing that makes people feel like they have something of value. But those people that use credit cards and cash dont seem to get their currency is technically digital and made up. and they have to pay fees and extortionate fees to transfer etc.. plus they can be siezed.
perhaps i'm having a meltdown but it seems stupid that people dont want digital currencies with traceable transactions and ownership...
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @premitive1 12 Jul 2023
people want to control their money, not let their money control them.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @SwearyDoctor 12 Jul 2023
yeah, it's a matter of degrees. All digital money is already traced, it's already controlled, it can be blocked.
The argument is always that CBDCs are "programmable money" in a way that digital money up to now is not, but that is also.. degrees. Traying to buy bitcoin with a credit card already gives us the experience of "you can't buy that with your money" or "you've exceeded your limit for buying X", but it's because of who the counterparty is. Of course, my credit card doesn't know if the bill at the supermarket is veggies or meat (yet) and could only block the market, not the items. Yet.
The fear is that CBDCs can, by having integrated programming with cash registers that gives my 50 magically appearing units if I choose to buy some officially certified save the whatever (facade show) item and limits my purchase of certified "bad" item X to 10 units a month or whatever, but there's no real reason this couldn't be implemented with cards.
I spend my time in two cash-heavy societies, so I can always just get bills and nobody bats an eye.
It never really used to be gems and shells, by the way. Anthropologists keep telling us that before physical money, there wasn't barter, there was a credit log or a mutual gift economy where small groups kept track of who gave what to whom and customs tended to balance it out.
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