See, I've been thinking that money is fundamentally broken. We don't need a better bank; we need to abolish banks. (If they do serve some purpose, then they can remain as a service for the wealthy.)<p>Paper money works in its simplicity. You always know how much you have, because you can hold it and count it. There's no way to overdraft, or have it charged without your consent. The main downside is having to be physically present to transfer it to another person. Making change is also a minor annoyance.<p>So, digital money should be designed to be very similar to cash. First, it should be legally within your possession at all times, even if it is just a number stored in a government database. You should never have to hand control over to a bank if you do not wish. Because losing control means they can fuck with your balance and delay transactions. Perhaps it could be thought of as micro treasury bonds (not sure). Second, there are no transaction fees. It does not make sense to hamper commerce; and any infrastructure costs for money servers and bandwidth are a complimentary service of the U.S. Mint. Third: transactions are completely controlled by the sole account owner. Nothing gets in or out without the owner's permission. There is a combined transaction history and queue, extending arbitrarily far into the past and future. You may authorize a transaction or deny one without penalty at any time. If insufficient funds are available, the transaction is either delayed or canceled. You may also authorize a recurring transaction, but these will appear in the same queue in case the need arises to cancel. The beauty of the infinite queue is there are no surprises.<p>Now, I'd argue that Congress or the Treasury should get cracking on this immediately, but I doubt that's going to happen. So if you start a bank, please try to hold the principles of paper money in mind. Institute firm policies of ownership and self control with zero fees. You can practice with a virtual currency (maybe for a game) and just try to get the security and interface down. Good luck!