Here's What A Digital Dollar Might Look Like
Plus more funding announcements and China calls out Libra as a threat
Happy Friday, Blockfolians
The Lede
The Digital Dollar Project, helmed by former CFTC chairman Christopher Giancarlo, has just released a white paper on how a digital dollar could be rolled out.
A key design detail is that the proposed digital dollar would have a two-tiered distribution architecture that would preserve the role of retail banks, rather than cutting them out in favor of a direct citizen-central bank relationship.
Giancarlo has been vocal about the idea that digital currencies are coming one way or another, and that the US constitutional preservation of privacy is a better guarantee than we’re likely to get from either China or private companies.
“When we do big things in the United States as we did with the space program, as we did with the internet, it’s almost always a very healthy partnership with the private sector and the public sector, with each learning from each other, with the private sector … bringing innovation to bear and the government looking out for core principles of privacy and individual rights and liberties and getting that balance."
What do you think? Does the US need a digital dollar. Hit us @blockfolio on Twitter to keep the conversation going.
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Highly Relevant Reading
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A new book from China’s Communist Party identifies Libra as a threat
Community Commentary
Nic Carter makes an interesting argument about the nature of social media platforms - a topic on everyone’s mind right now
Lyn Alden is one of the most prescient rising stars of FinTwit and chroniclers of the challenges of a strong dollar
A Really Big Number We Should Be Paying Attention To
$7,100,000,000,000
That’s the size of the Fed’s balance sheet. Just a mite under “infinity”
Final Thought
Checkout Useful Tulips to track bitcoin usage around the world