RE: Thoughts on China’s forthcoming Digital Yuan
Oh, you mean me, here on Steem
Didn't know that, sorry to hear so!
China is not going to promote decentralization, and neither is Zuckerborg.
100% agreed
These currencies are wolves in sheep's fleece.
No, think beyond. Like I've written in the bottom section of this post, it's like a game of chess. Every move leads to a new situation. There are a plethora of forces at work. Not everything you see at the surface is what it is. I'm sure China wants to monitor our every move, and log and deeplearn from all data they're gathering from a Digital Yuan. A Big Brother type of state might be on the horizon, don't think I'm not seeing that.
Have you watched season 1 of "mr.Robot" ? If not, do yourself a favor and watch it. Study it even. It has multiple layers of truth in it, even if much dramatised. In it, "eCorp" is much like JP Morgan, like Facebook even. And in it, a total state of anarchy came from a Bitcoin-like financial shadow system. Both aspects are exaggerated and overly dramatised, but not too far-fetched from what's actually happening.
Is a totalitarian state, like Big Brother, desirable? Of course not. Is an anarchistic anonymous digital Wild West desirable? Even less so, arguably. If both forces are at work, they keep each other under control. I don't want a world in which citizens are controlled by corporations, by the powers that be. I also don't want a world where anarchy rules and "digital scumbags" can take your every belonging from under your nose, or to see you get mugged in a dark corner and be forced to open your wallet, and hand over your phone, "or else...".
Just open up https://www.tradingview.com/symbols/BTCUSD/ and look at "BART moves" happening with the mother of crypto, the Bitcoin. It's the only asset in the world which early adopters got for free, or almost free, HODL'd some, and now able to "draw price" like they see fit. They're waiting for future shorts & longs to "REKT", I can't believe anybody's even willing to risk their funds using x100 or x500 leverage ...
Last weekend I stumbled on an old forum post, from 2010. In it, somebody tried to sell 10,000 BTC for $50.- He couldn't get a deal. There was somebody else offering to buy 15,000 BTC for $20.-, but they couldn't agree on whether to use PayPal or not.
Those people exist. People that spent $20.- to buy 15,000 BTC, and then HODL'd, then spent 20 BTC on Ripple before it mooned. Spent 20 BTC on Steem before it mooned. Etc. etc. And turned those alt investments, on which they originally didn't even spent 1 USD, into millions and millions.
Some of those very-early crypto folks, did and do well for society. Others are pure criminals.
You hate AML/KYC? I don't like want to trust some foreign exchange with my ID data either. But I know that such regulations are needed, to NOT fall, as a society, into a trap like you can see happening in mr.Robot.
Having big market forces, like China, like Facebook, as a strong crypto force, opens up enormous opportunities and at the same time functions as a contra-weight to the "shadow forces that be", the "bad crypto whales" that draw prices and perform BART moves as they please, with using absolutely nothing they paid for...
We don't disagree fundamentally. But open your eyes to the various forces at play, and think beyond...
A bug is never just a mistake. It represents something bigger...
You missed a layer of depth in Mr. Robot. The chaos was engineered by eCorp so that people would demand eCorp fix the problem: classic Hegelian Dialectic in action. Look at Libya today. It is not free people doing what they want. It is a clash of warlords engineered by globalists. It's not anarchy that causes chaos, it's defenseless victims. Also, Mr. Robot is fiction, not fact, and published by the enemedia, so I wouldn't pay too much attention to it's propaganda components.
Getting people into centralized digital money will prevent people from getting to decentralized digital money. It will increase the power of thugs and profiteers and prevent freedom and prosperity. Even if in the beginning a few people get lambo'd to show the sheep how wonderful slavery is, that will just be a ploy to fool people into using slave tokens.
You do not grasp that technology increases the power of individuals over institutions; freedom over slavery. Wealth is independent means. It's not money. Anarchy is not chaos. It's prosperity. The flip side of prosperity is that it requires security. When free people are secure from thugs, then they rule themselves. Note that anarchy means 'no rulers', and people ruling themselves is not anarchy. It's autarchy.
Insofar as people are able to be fooled into believing they are free when they're not, they're slaves. Libra and Digital Yuan are tricks that will lure people seeking freedom and prosperity into digital corrals for sheeple, and that will prevent them from actually using decentralized currencies that do prosper them. Both are bad for freedom and prosperity at every level of consideration.