Prediction: most countries will experiment with launching their own digital 💸 currencies.

(a short thread)
1/ What’s a digital currency?

It’s programmable money directly issued from the central bank to citizens.

Right now, banks are intermediaries and central bank doesn’t issue money directly to citizens.

Read more here:
2/ The programmability of a digital currency is what makes it so appealing.

It can allow the central bank of a country to achieve their wet dream: precisely control the economy.

They will do it by precisely controlling the money in your hands.
3/ Economy is getting slower?

Program the unspent money (which hasn’t changed hands in X time period) to reduce over a period of time.

People will start spending.
4/ Taxes are not getting collected?

Simply deduct the tax automatically during transactions.
5/ Want to manage a welfare program?

Send money that can only be spent on a particular good or item (say eduction or medical expenses).
6/ Want to uplift consumer mood?

Simply increase money below a certain threshold by a factor of X, leaving more money in the hands of consumers.
8/ This precise control is what authoritarian nations want, so it’s no surprise that China is already experimenting with the idea.

Read this by @finshots

finshots.in/archive/what-i…
9/ Hacker News has a great discussion on this: news.ycombinator.com/item?id=248183…
10/ The inevitable consequence of this would be unimaginable control of the state over the individual.

But the number of problems digital currencies solves for a central bank makes it irresistible.

I’m fairly confident that digital rupee is coming.
11/ Paradoxically, the success of decentralised cryptocurrencies has made many people OK with the notion of a digital currency.

I don’t think many consumers will care whether a digital currency centrally controlled or decentralised.
12/ A trivial way for a nation to boost adoption of digital currency is to give extra interest rate on digital currency if you exchange your traditional currency with it.

Once it’s adopted and starts getting used and the old money disappears, central bank has precise control.
13/ Digital currencies are fascinating.

Just to be clear, with any tech there’s positives and negatives.

The positives are that economy will likely to be stable, welfare programs can be managed well and UBI can be launched.
14/ That’s it.

Hope you enjoyed the thread :)

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More from @paraschopra

20 Apr
Depression is terrible, and severe forms of it could make people suicidal.

New research is finding that psychedelics are much more effective than anti-depressants at treating depression.
1/ For example, this randomised trial study that just came out found 70% of patients reduced depression symptoms within a week (as compared to anti depressant with 33% efficacy)

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
2/ Unfortunately, even though evidence is accumulating on benefits of these drugs, they are still classified as Schedule 1 drugs in India.

Which means not even medical research is allowed.

See this by @Somaa_org

somaa.org/copy-of-campai…
Read 6 tweets
19 Apr
My moral code.

(a long 🧵thread)
1/ Lately, I’ve been feeling a lack of a well-deliberated, explicit moral code.

The world is changing really fast – we have Elon Musk trying to set up a human colony on Mars while Earth’s bio-ecosystem is degrading by the day.
2/ So, should I support the investment of resources into making Mars habitable while Earth is gradually becoming unhabitable?

This, obviously, isn’t the only question.

Every day, I feel like I need to decide which way to swing on controversial topics.
Read 67 tweets
13 Apr
There's a 💊 drug (named Zolgensma) that costs $2.5mn (Rs 18 crore). Currently the world's costliest drug.

Why is it so expensive?

(a tiny thread)
1/ It treats a rare genetic disease Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).

SMA is a horrible disease that kills 90% of babies before the age of 2.

Until Zolgensma, it was untreatable.
2/ The disease incidence rate is extremely low.

For example, in the US there would be only 400 new cases per year.

(Such diseases are called rare or orphan diseases)
Read 8 tweets
12 Apr
Crypto is the future of our society.

(a 🧵 thread on my podcast with @balajis)
1/ Balaji is a deep thinker on crypto and its implications.

Formerly the CTO of Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, he’s believes crypto technologies such as bitcoin will change the world the say way Internet did.

Here's the podcast:

2/ We touch on a lot of topics in the podcast.

• How to assess a strange new thing's potential
• How technologies rise and fall
• How to tell what's a fad and what's real
• How to identify nascent technology that will change the world
Read 65 tweets
11 Apr
I bet our descendants will get bored of exploring new planets faster than our ancestors got bored of exploring new lands.

Here’s why.
1/ Unlike distant lands, we can observe space from far.

We know an insane amount of stuff about Mars.

Compare this to Columbus who didn’t even know that the Americas existed.
2/ Unlike exploring the Earth, we have no expectation of stumbling upon another culture or language.

We have no expectation of stumbling upon something new to trade with.

We won’t find cloves or silk on Mars.

Space is barren.
Read 6 tweets
11 Apr
Hubble deep field, the most amazing picture of our universe.

(a tiny 🧵 thread)
1/ I learned so much from this recent paper by @tobyordoxford (h/t to @anderssandberg for tweeting)

This thread is based on that paper, so if you’re intrigued, highly recommend reading the entire thing arxiv.org/pdf/2104.01191…
2/ One of the most awe-inspiring insights from the paper is that many of the galaxies we see in the Hubble deep field image are FOREVER beyond our reach.

I don’t mean just practically, but even theoretically.
Read 17 tweets

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