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India Considering Phased Roll Out of Central Bank Digital Currency (techcrunch.com) 31

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
India's central bank is considering launching a digital currency, according to a top executive, giving a clear indication of its intentions for the first time after previously stating that it was studying the idea. From a report: T Rabi Sankar, the deputy governor of Reserve Bank of India, said at a conference today that the central bank is considering introducing the nation's digital currency in a "phased" manner while legal changes are made to the South Asian nation's foreign-exchange rules and IT laws. The digital currency, which will be backed by sovereign, will lower the economy's reliance on cash, enable cheaper and smoother international settlements, and protect people from the volatility of privacy cryptocurrencies, he said. "Every idea has to wait for its time, and the time for CBDC [central bank digital currency] is near. We have carefully evaluated the risks," he told an audience at a conference held by think-tank Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.
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India Considering Phased Roll Out of Central Bank Digital Currency

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  • Beware features of government digital currency (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday July 22, 2021 @03:53PM (#61609281)

    Government based digital currency is something I think may be worth pushing back on. If you have not been following this, it's been in the works for quite some time now and has these "features" that may be of interest to most Slashdot readers:

    1) Can be blocked from making "undesirable" purchases, by person.

    2) Can adjust negative interest rate, per person, to force you to spend money before it all evaporates (negative interest rates are a real thing in some banks already).

    3) Government will know everything you buy, exactly.

    4) Possible geographic restrictions on where currency can be spent (when the unfavorable nation of the week is changed no digital money can be sent there or spent by people there any longer).

    You can read more about this, including some benefits, here [101blockchains.com].

    I just don't think any benefits outweigh the horrible cons.

    • The main use case for Digital Rupee is Helicopter Drops. When you are pumping money into an economy you want it to be spent to create economic activity instead of getting stashed in the bank accounts of the 1%. Digital rupee can have a decay built into it. Every time you do a transaction the clock resets. After each transaction the rupee keeps losing value at 1% a month. People who accumulate capital would be paying in effect a wealth tax while the poor and middle class who live paycheck to paycheck wont be

      • The main use case for Digital Rupee is Helicopter Drops.

        Although that is a benefit they are already managing helicopter drops just fine via stimulus checks.

        Digital rupee can have a decay built into it. Every time you do a transaction the clock resets

        Exactly, pretty much any algorithmic application you can imagine could be employed against the money people have.

        while the poor and middle class who live paycheck to paycheck wont be affected

        Nothing like a society in which saving is not only discouraged but pun

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ghoul ( 157158 )
          India has not done any helicopter drops . People have been surviving on savings and private charity.

    • The Swedish government is currently running a pilot project called E-Krona (our regular currency is called Krona). We currently have 0 percent interest rate, and had negative interest from February 2015 through January 2020: https://www.riksbank.se/sv/sta... [riksbank.se]

      I was unaware of digital currencies having per-person interest and purchase blocking. I will read up on the technical implementation details of this pilot project. Thanks for highlighting these horrible new potential features.

      • I was unaware of digital currencies having per-person interest and purchase blocking.

        I forget where I read about these features specifically, but I think it was in some article about digital currencies being tied to social credit systems - so it might be unique to China, but I doubt it.

    • None of those are really exclusive to a "fiat-crypto", they can all be done in your existing bank accounts and cash.

      There's only 1 unique feature for crypto and that is decentralized trust.

      It's not possible in any other solution except a triple entry accounting system like blockchain. Or stuff based on that.

      And the foremost benefit it provides to potential users is that no govt will be able to devalue or seize your currency (or tax it while it's not being transacted with a fiat or a physical asset)

      There's j

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ghoul ( 157158 )
        Its tulips where only 21 million tulips could ever be produced. Another way to say its like diamonds where the de beers prevent more diamonds from coming to the market except for btc you dont need a worldwide cabal controlling govts from the shadows, all you need is math.

  • Are they crazy? Fuck this shit. Please tell me there is no way any Indian citizen should be dumb enough to go along with this. This is obviously going to enable government officials and bureaucrats to track everything you do and are unwittingly associated with. And thatâ(TM)s assuming there is no way someone high up or a hacker canâ(TM)t tamper with it. Also, even ignoring potential systemic weaknesses, if the cryptography is broken what are they going to do? One way hashes have been broken before

  • "You're not making Christianity better, you're just making rock-n-roll worse." --Hank Hill. [youtube.com]

  • The digital currency, which will be backed by sovereign, will lower the economy's reliance on cash, enable cheaper and smoother international settlements, and protect people from the volatility of privacy cryptocurrencies AND ALLOW THE GOVERNMENT BANKS RETAILERS ADVERTISERS TO KNOW EVERY PENNY YOU SPEND.

  • All these countries planning to launch their own govt crypto currencies are so embarrassingly clueless !

    There's zero benefit to a decentralized crypto owned by a central authority.

    And apart from decentralization, there are no other benefits over their own currencies and existing online Transaction systems in using the blockchain except just wasted power and processing.

    It's not like the crypto will not devalue along with fiat currency.

    The existing online transaction systems are already working great. Like th

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