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.
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)
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
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.