Skip to main content

SHCs are sick, as the kids say

Now, of course, when techno-determinist mirrorshaded hypester commentators (eg, me) say that the future of money might be somewhat different to the Bretton Woods II structure and that perhaps the decentralising nature of computer, communications and cryptographic (CCC) together mean that there might be currency issuers other than central banks (as, for example, I did in Wired magazine two decades ago), this might be dismissed by scenario planners and strategists as cypherpunk-addled babble.

It seems to me, however, that the reflections of sensible, knowledgable and powerful players is tending int the same direction. Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, recently gave a speech at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in which he said that [Central Banking] a form of global digital currency could be "the answer to the destabilising dominance of the US dollar in today’s global monetary system”.

Wow.

Mr. Carney went on to talk about the idea of “synthetic hegemonic currency” (abbreviated to SHC by everyone else but abbreviated to SyHC by me so that I can pronounce it “sick”). An obvious example of such a currency would be an electronic version of the IMF’s Special Drawing Right (SDR). In fact the former boss of SDRs has already put forward such a proposal, asking for the IMF to "develop a procedure for issuing and using market SDRs following currency board rules and backed 100% by official SDRs or by an appropriate mix of sovereign debt of the five basket currencies”. This, of course, sounds a little like Facebucks (or “Libra” as they are more properly designated).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Financial Cryptography: Corda Day - a new force

Forum friend Ian Grigg, who I always take very seriously indeed on any such topic, wrote about Corda on his blog and concluded with a powerful statement. Bitcoin told the users it wanted an unstoppable currency - sure, works for a small group but not for the mass market. Ethereum told their users they need an unstoppable machine - which worked how spectacularly with the DAO? Not. What. We. Wanted. Corda is the only game in town because it's the only one that asked the users. It's that simple. From Financial Cryptography: Corda Day - a new force xxx It seems to me, however, what Ian is pointing to as the greatest strength of their approach is also the greatest weakness. A staple feature of unimaginative management consultants presentations about innovation is some variation on the statement by Henry Ford that if you had asked users what they wanted, they would have asked for faster horses coupled with some variation on the statement by Steve jobs that it was pointless ask...
Post a Comment
Read more

Barclays slated after CIO takes a year to open a bank account

xxx The rigorous KYC procedures at US banks the New Jersey-based crime ring created more than 7,000 fake identities to get tens of thousands of credit cards From  Woman Gets 3 Years for Role in $200M Credit Card Fraud Scam - ABC News xxx xxxx Barclays slated after CIO takes a year to open a bank account : "An adviser to a new charitable incorporated organisation that spent more than a year trying to open a bank account has blasted Barclays for its onerous demands and disproportionate due diligence." xxx In a recent survey for VocaLink, some two-thirds of respondents said that they saw value in the establishment of a central KYC utility. They are wrong. We don’t need a central KYC utility, we need a federated reputation infrastructure. Or, to put it another way, a financial services passport ( as I mentioned earlier in the year ).
Post a Comment
Read more

There is no excuse for not taking cards

So we went to the pub. For lunch. Seven of us. Say £20 per head. £100+ quid. Say £50 quid gross for the pub. Colleague goes to order food and drinks and pay at the bar. Apologetic barmaid comes over to explain that their “card machine” is down, so she can only accept cash. Under normal circumstances I would have simply walked out, feeling it wholly inappropriate to reward such a poorly managed establishment and, as a functioning actor in a capitalist economy, done my duty to depress their lunchtime takings. Here’s what we wanted to say: This is absurd. This is 2016 not 1916. Your card machine is down? Well, so what! Are you seriously telling me that mein host has no mobile phone number capable of registering for PingIt or PayM? That none of the staff or the pub itself have a PayPal account that I can send the money to? That neither the owners nor managers not contingency planners thought to tuck an iZettle behind the bar to use when the clunky and expensive GPRS terminal fails for o...
Post a Comment
Read more