Boston Fed releases report, source code of digital currency prototype study
Many people on HN claim that the rise of crypto-currencies is a social catastrophe.<p>Maybe so (I disagree), but wait until central-bank issued digital currencies become a reality, you'll very quickly learn the real meaning of social catastrophe.<p>Spending 10 seconds thinking about it, I can come up with the following scenarios:<p><pre><code>    - complete and utter "financial deplatforming" if you don't behave as a citizen. This is basically China's CCP dream come true.

    - total loss of privacy: the absolute entirety of your financial interactions are an open book to the government. You won't be able to buy a pack of gums without big brother knowing about it, much less paying for your sex toys.

    - security nightmare : how do you guarantee the soundness of such a system when it is centralized. Just ask Sony how long they manage to keep their private keys secret on average.

    - security nightmare : preventing the leakage of citizen's private financial information. If the chain is public, there is none. If it is kept under lock and key by the govt: 1) no way to check what the actual supply is 2) subject to hackage and publishing the data publicly. Knowing the track records of governmental institutions when it comes to IT security, this is basically a guaranteed fuck-up within the first 5 years of such a system existing.

    - economic nightmare: running the printing press full steam is now instantaneous and gives the government even more unchecked power to spend money on brain-dead programs, without leaving any decision-making power to the citizens.
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I don't think we will avoid the implementation of such an abomination, but I do believe that - like in everything political - if there's healthy competition from decentralized chains such as Bitcoin, the craziness will be kept in check because there will be an escape hatch to the govt. economic jail.