You've probably been too busy following the #FTX drama to have noticed some news this week:
The NY Fed along with Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, Wells Fargo and others are starting a 12-week digital dollar #CBDC pilot study.
Big deal or NBD? Get your ☕️ and follow along:
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2/ IMPORTANT CONTEXT (you'll see why later)-
The BIS (the final boss for #bitcoin imho), issued a 41 page report titled "The Future Monetary System" showing their vision for a central bank issued CBDC, which this pilot stems from.
3/ This project is piloting the "regulated liability network": to test how banks can use a tokenized USD in a distributed database, to "help speed up payments and settlement time in currency"
4/ The "technology" will allow banks to simulate issuing digital money emulating their customers' funds then settling with the central bank via the ledger.
The biggest problem they're looking to address is what @Strike is doing using #btc ⚡️⚡️: settling cash internationally
5/ The testers?
BNY Mellon
HSBC
PNC
Toronto-Dominion
Truist
US Bancorp
Mastercard
Citi
Wells Fargo
This list is not random; they cover the majority of the different types of US Financial Institutions (see this thread for more info):
6/ The regulated liability network is meant to follow all existing laws and regulations, including AML and KYC.
In other words, same as today, just on the "blockchain".
Although they don't use that word, now that it's no longer seen as innovative, but rather scammy 🤣#winning
7/ Clearly the initial focus is to simulate digital exchange and clearance, but according to the NY Fed innovation center, the concept can be expanded to multicurrency operation and stablecoins, as "money and banking evolve".
A digital USD has been debated widely by the Fed...
8/ Earlier this year, the Fed published a report summarizing their perspective on the subject of CBDCs, which in their view should:
- benefit > risk for users
- more beneficial than other available methods
- protect privacy
- anti-criminal activity
- have broad support
9/ 1 important point of clarification on what they're actually piloting here:
a WHOLESALE digital money (wCBDC). Meaning it's for settlement between banks, not necessarily for retail use, at least for now.
10/ Given that distinction, it's unclear how this specific pilot would meet the criteria set forth by the Fed for a CBDC to be viable.
There's clearly varying takes on the usefulness of a CBDC all together, even within the Fed itself. Here's Neel Kashkari, for example:
11/ Is this project to help show the Fed members opposing CBDCs their potential "usefulness"?
This is a part of a broader project going on at the Fed: Project Cedar, the inaugural project of a new team in the NY Fed: the NY innovation Center (NYIC).
Wait, who??
Get your 🍿:
12/ the NYIC is was established... get this.... in partnership with the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub, to QUOTE:
"aim to advance research regarding CBDCs within the US context."
Thus the thread nested in tweet 2 above, about the BIS' perspective on CBDCs
😑
13/ Now the regulated liability network isn't their first initiative... They've already successfully (surprise surprise) completed a 12 week demonstration of "distributed ledger technology" to enable instant and atomic settlement of FX spot transactions in under 10 seconds...
14/ between the NY Fed and different counterparties across separate and homogeneous ledgers, using a really novel, ground breaking, state of the art consensus protocol, and I kid you not:
"proof-of-authority"
They are literally inventing their own 💩coin.
ICO whitepaper 🔜
15/ All in all, the likelihood of this specific pilot program ushering in the CBDC dystopia we're headed towards, is at least for now, unlikely.
The approach makes sense though: slowly boil the frog: Get people used to the idea of a CBDC between banks to get them comfortable...
16/ ...then once they are, send in the full CBDC panopticon dystopia.
The timing is also very suspect:
- FTX debacle
- immediately post midterm elections
- on the cusp of, at the very least, a recession
- US Treasury exploring buy back of debt, AKA: NOT!!! QE or QT 🤡
17/ Then in the midst of all the financial vulnerability of everyday citizens, you introduce the "innovative solution": CBDC.
This is NOT conspiracy nor hyperbole
This IMF working paper from 2015 ‼️ called for this exactly to eliminate the "zero lower bound" (interest rates):
18/ abstract: "all that is needed to empower monetary policy to cut interest rates as much as
needed for economic stimulus now is to change from a paper standard to an electronic money standard, and to be willing to have paper currency go away from par."
It is THE distributed ledger of choice for people who value their privacy and their freedom.
Any other distributed ledger for value exchange is obsolete and useless from the start. A solution in search of a problem, because Bitcoin already solved it.
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US CPI in October was 7.7% but there's a hidden reason to believe that we're very close to a local CPI top.
Starting in January 2023, the BLS plans to change the CPI calculation (again), which will likely (and not surprisingly) lower the CPI prints.
What are they doing?
🧵👇 1/
2/ first, ICYMI: CPI calculation changes aren't new. As a matter of fact, the calculation is ever changing, which is 1 of #bitcoin ers main issues with it.
We've covered the changes of the CPI calculations over the years in this thread; have a look:
Starting with the January 2023 data (reported in Feb 2023), the BLS plans to update weights annually for the Consumer Price Index based on a single calendar year of data.
We are heading down a slippery and dangerous slope:
Governments worldwide have unmanageable debt & rising rates make matters worse.
While the future is uncertain, there aren't many possible outcomes.
Why & How Governments Fail Financially
(and how #Bitcoin fixes this)
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2/ There are 2 main ways governments can financially fail.
1. lose ability to meet obligations to repay debt
2. fails to reassure the public that the value of its currency can still be trusted, leading to hyperinflation.
6 countries have never (yet) defaulted on their debt--
3/ Those countries: NZ, AUS, CAN, Thailand, Denmark and the US. For now.
Both causes involve loss of trust.
When a government loses trust through incompetence, corruption, or as a result of a war loss, chaos typically ensues.
Currently:
War✅
Incompetence ✅
Corruption ✅
😬
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
This Friday we will be announcing Coinbits’ newest ambassador and talking to him/her about a variety of topics.
To celebrate this occasion we are giving away 200,000 sats.
Rules below⬇️⬇️⬇️ twitter.com/i/spaces/1ZkJz…
50,000 sats giveaway rules.
To be eligible for 1 of 3 50k sats prizes: 1. Like and retweet the above tweet. 2. Follow us on Twitter @CoinbitsApp 3. Tune in to our space on Friday
An additional 50k sats will be awarded to the 1st person who
guesses the ambassador correctly before our announcement in reply to this thread⬇️
We will post a new clue about this person’s identity every day leading up to Friday in this thread⬇️⬇️⬇️
1st clue: initially read @saifedean ‘s TBS this year. 👀
Last week, the most bullish #Bitcoin regulatory event in 2022 so far took place, and it flew under the radar of many bitcoiners.
How bullish?
Bullish enough for @saylor to have called this event a "major milestone on the way to $BTC reaching $5MM USD".
Here's what happened 🧵👇
2/ The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) decided to require companies to measure cryptocurrency assets at fair value.
This is extremely bullish.
Who?
What?
Why?
So what?
read on 👇
3/ first the who.
The FASB in the US is a federal regulatory agency that establishes the standards for financial reporting in the US.
Those standards are known as "generally accepted acounting principles," or GAAP for short.
What are these standards?
Money printer go brrr is a favorite meme amongst #bitcoin ers
If you didn't know before 2020 how new money gets created, you now know thanks to this infamous clip of JayPow describing it
But how does The Federal Reserve *actually* create new money?
Money Creation 101🧵
2/ The Federal Reserve is the Central Bank of the US and has the power to create money, digitally and physically.
We've written some threads describing how the Fed Reserve came to be, and how it operates which you can find in our thread of threads:
3/ 1 of the responsibilities of the Fed is to manage the total supply of $USD in circulation.
The vast majority of money supply today is created digitally, debited, and credited to commercial banks at the moment of the creation of a new loan.
If you are hearing about the blood bath in the markets for bonds and USTs but aren't 100% certain what they are or what's the difference, we got your back.
2/ This isn't our first thread about bonds, have a look here at a slightly different topic: bond yield curves, where we high-level explain bonds, but deep dive more on the implications of their curves' inversion:
3/ What is a US Treasury?
US Treasury securities are debt instruments issued by the US Dept of Treasury to raise the money required to operate the US govt.
They are backed by "the full faith and credit of the US govt: that interest and principal payments will be paid on time."