[neoncontrails]

What makes you think the US would be motivated to hamstring its own Federal Reserve, or threaten the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency?

[bee_rider]

I don’t think bitcoin is some sort of intelligence thing, Occam’s razor, it is probably just a dude. I mean, what was his big feat of secrecy? Writing a paper needn’t necessarily leave a big footprint.

But! Bitcoins are too clunky to threaten the federal reserve really. And, a system that is widely understood by laymen to be anonymous, but is actually pseudonymous and inherently traceable, seems like Christmas for intelligence and police organizations.

[spaceman_2020]

The funny thing is, crypto is actually good for the dollar.

USDT/USDC are far easier to acquire than actual USD in third world countries. There’s a separate economy built up in Africa, Phillippines, etc. that operates entirely on USDT.

You can see this in the price of USDT vs USD in these countries - USDT commands a premium.

Crypto via coins like USDT means that Nigerians increasingly want to work for USDT, not Naira. Bad for Naira, good for the USD

[elif]

Silver (#8 asset in the world) is also "clunky" but it is close to being surpassed in market cap by Bitcoin (#10 asset in the world).

A large part of that value is derived from a market cap based upon the stability created by the dormant coins, like gold sitting dormant in fort knox used to stabilize the USD value.

It really does seem like an intelligent design passes Occam's razor more than "oops i conveniently formatted that harddrive then disappeared"

[sangnoir]

Hypothetically, getting those who hate "the feds" to record their transactions on a public ledger would be criminal intelligence coup even bigger than when FBI's "Encrypted Phone" platform became popular with criminals[1]. In this hypothetical, the FBI would hack/subvert/operate their own mixer service and eliminate uncooperative services, so that all money-flows are transparent to investigators.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdca/pr/fbi-s-encrypted-phone-p...

[TimeBearingDown]

Not all cryptocurrencies use public ledgers. Bitcoin was the first, but it was always intended to add privacy tech - see MimbleWimble.

Zero knowledge proofs and other strong privacy protections are available on more modern projects. Some ledgers are entirely dark, granting a decent anonymity set.

[lolinder]

What makes you think that Bitcoin poses any threat to the dollar or the Federal Reserve?

[TimeBearingDown]

It’s no threat at all for the foreseeable future. Make no mistake though, over the next decades, the core idea is an existential threat.

If a currency like Monero with further developed scaling and privacy features is able to gain a foothold in developing nations, and enough off-ramps are set up via decentralized exchanges like Bisq and through direct acceptance for goods and services, then it is difficult to see the spread stopping between nations with reasonably free Internet, especially as factions within each government will likely have some direct interest.

The US dollar will be least threatened, the longest.

[mtnGoat]

Spitballing here… it could have been a test to see how easy they could get a digital currency into common use. The idea of a digital currency offers the Fed a lot of advantages… no money laundering, traceability, etc. it could actually advance them if well executed, not threaten them.

[coffeebeqn]

Does the fed employ a lot of cryptographers? I feel like people expect the U.S. gov to be omnipotent when the last 20 years have been just fumble after another

[DinaCoder99]

Seems like a very poor fit for the Fed's needs outside of a honeypot for people actually trying to launder money.

[elif]

The Bretton-Woods paradigm was already in collapse at the advent of bitcoin due to the corresponding growth of the US trade deficit as the US stopped producing/exporting and began massive consumption from the east.

The USA is in a debt spiral spending $659B on interest on debt annually (13% of tax revenue) while running larger and larger deficits. This cannot really be escaped, and it's impact on inflation is becoming unavoidable.

[awaythrow999]

For the same reason it created tor. For cover. And to move assets beyond enemy lines?

[ikiris]

Has bitcoin done either of these laughable things within any plausibility?

[neoncontrails]

Bitcoin? No. But if you're asking whether digital currencies (which share a lot of the same underlying characteristics) might transform the global monetary landscape, well, they already have: 11 countries have issued CBDCs, and another 130 are actively exploring them as a more convenient alternative to USD for international transaction settlements. Several of those are in advanced pilot stages. No one with serious ties to the US financial system finds this to be a laughing matter, I assure you. The dollar is by far the currency of choice in trade invoicing (more than 50% of total trade) and foreign exchange transaction volume (almost 90% of the total) globally (Moronoti, 2022). This also means that US settlement authorities and financial institutions are involved in finalising most global transactions. If two countries have CBDCs, then they in principle would have the ability to settle transactions between themselves with near-instant finality, potentially bypassing the current dollar-based system.

I think we can safely expect at least one major CBDC-based cross-border payment system to launch by the end of the year. Soramitsu is the most promising candidate IMHO. A prevailing theory is that foreign corporations that operate domestically within a country will need to create accounts with a domestic central bank for CBDC payments to work efficiently. If this becomes a reality, the status of the dollar's "exorbitant privilege" will be up for immediate dispute. Its geopolitical hegemony over global finance won't be swept away overnight, but it will suffer a major blow. Only time will tell how serious.

[reachableceo]

For when it isn’t?

To move assets to agents without a trace?