A library of snippets
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Western regulators could ultimately ban the use of China’s digital currency, but that wouldn’t stop it from being used in large parts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia, which in turn could engender some underground demand even in the US and Europe.
The High Stakes of the Coming Digital Currency War by Kenneth Rogoff – Project Syndicate:
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Sean McFate, a former US paratrooper and now adviser to the Pentagon, but not quite as Hollywood might want us to believe.
“When people think about cyber they think about sabotage, but the true power of cyber is information; to shape people’s perception of reality and to craft a narrative,” he says.
“That’s the future of war, not tanks.
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Powell said… a digital national currency may not offer advantages to the U.S. that it may do to other nations
Fed Reserve Evaluating Digital Dollar But Benefits Still Unclear, Says Chairman – CoinDesk:
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The Microsoft-owned company’s first moderation report, published on Thursday, revealed that 19.5m fake accounts had been automatically tackled at the moment of registration by its AI systems, with a further 2m “restricted” after being created.
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A live simulation of a White House National Security Council meeting during a major national security crisis with former senior administration officials and thought leaders Nicholas Burns, Ash Carter, Jennifer Fowler, Gary Gensler, Aditi Kumar, Neha Narula, Meghan L. O’Sullivan , Eric Rosenbach, Lawrence H. Summers, and Richard Verma.
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So the upshot is that China’s CBDC will be providing a certain sort of privacy to users. Which reminds me about what Rodney Garratt and Morten Bech, two economists that specialize in payments systems, have written about payments anonymity. According to Garratt and Bech, there are two grades of payments anonymity. With third-party anonymity, a person’s true identity is hidden from everyone who participates in a transaction, including the system operator. Banknotes are the best example of third-party anonymity, since the issuer—the central bank—has no idea who is using them.
Counterparty anonymity is less strong. This sort of anonymity prevails when personal information about the two counterparties to an exchange remain hidden from each other but the system operator is still privy to each user’s identity. Yao’s controlled anonymity presumably means that DCEP will provide Garratt and Bech’s second sort of anonymity, counterparty anonymity.
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“Sixty two percent of U.S. respondents in Bain’s annual retail banking report published Monday said they would buy a financial product from an established technology company. Among people ages 18 to 34 it was even higher — roughly 75% said they would be open to banking with a tech giant.”
From “Majority of Americans would try banking with big tech: Bain report”.
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“Practical MaaS delivers public transit ticketing within consumer facing or white label MaaS apps such as; Uber, Transit, Moovit, Gertek and Kisio Digital. This connects public transit with private mobility services without the need for discounts on tickets or new business models.”
From “The Future of Fare Payments: Account-Based Ticketing and MaaS”.
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The Chinese have, to an extent, leapfrogged the credit and debit card revolution that overtook advanced economies in the last century, with most of new adopters using mobile technology to go cashless… almost two-thirds of online sales and more than one third of payments in stores were now made through leading mobile wallet operators including Alipay and WeChat Pay.
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“Technically, it’s illegal for Chinese merchants to refuse payment in cash, but this rule is hardly ever enforced, and China has been sprinting to a cashless society that requires mobile devices — not credit-cards — to effect payments, even to street hawkers.
This has lots of implications for privacy, surveillance, taxation, and fairness, but in the short term, the biggest impact is on visitors to China, who are increasingly unable to buy anything because they lack Chinese payment apps like Wechat, and even when they install them, the apps’ support for non-Chinese bank accounts and credit cards is spotty-to-nonexistent.”
From “Foreigners visiting China are increasingly stumped by its cashless society / Boing Boing”.
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The last time that I went to China
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Foreign visitors in China finally will be able to use Alipay to pay for goods and services, marking the first time that Alibaba has opened up access to its e-wallet outside of its user population. Previously available only to consumers with a Chinese bank account and local mobile number, an international version of Alipay can be downloaded and used in mainland China over a 90-day period.
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Chinese payments giant WeChat Pay can now be used by foreign visitors to pay for goods and services in China.
WeChat Pay follows Alipay in allowing foreign visitors to make payments in China | ZDNet:
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Contactless cards accounted for just under one-third of [UK] credit card transactions and getting on for half (46 per cent) of transactions on debit cards,
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Snippings