TL;DR

• Florida just outright banned Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)! And we get the feeling that the whole 'CBDC debate' is about to get politicized, real fast...

• But it doesn't need to. Here's a super simple breakdown of the pros & cons of CBDCs:

• Pros: Instant global transfers and payments. Cons: CBDCs are 'programmable currencies', controlled by a single government entity (in the case of the US, it's the Federal Reserve).

• The trade off looks like this: Blazingly fast money transfers using a digital currency that can be blocked, switched off, and/or tracked in realtime by a government entity.

• There're already tamper proof decentralized digital currencies that support super fast global payments...so it feels like we're on the wrong end of a bad trade here.

Full Story

So, Florida just outright banned Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)!

In reading all of the news coverage around it, we got the feeling that the whole 'CBDC debate' is about to get politicized, real fast...

(But it doesn't need to).

Here's a super simple breakdown of the pros & cons of CBDCs:

Pros

• Instant global transfers and payments.

Cons

• CBDCs are 'programmable currencies', controlled by a single government entity (in the case of the US, it's the Federal Reserve).

The trade off looks like this:

Blazingly fast money transfers anywhere in the world (hoooray!) using a digital currency that can be blocked, switched off, and/or tracked in realtime by a government entity (booo!).

Here's our two cents:

We've said this in the past, but we'll say it again: we're glass half full kind of folks.

We don't assume that just because the Fed can stop us spending our CBDCs how we want, that they will. (Maybe we're too trusting, who knows?)

That said: why allow the option to exist?

For faster international money transfers?

There're already tamper proof decentralized digital currencies that do just that.

...it feels like we're on the wrong end of a bad trade here.