Thread by @GeorgeSelgin

And one last, clarifying thread, about what I'm _not_ saying.

https://twitter.com/GeorgeSelgin/status/1396943592262877187

I am _not_ saying that today's private digital currencies are just dandy. In fact, many have very serious serious shortcomings.

I'm saying that that isn't a lesson one can even begin to draw from US experience with private banknotes. That's so not only because of what I've said about that experience. Nor is it so just because conditions have dramatically changed.

It's so because the mechanics (to call them that) of digital currency competition have hardly anything in common with those of competition among competing issuers of redeemable banknotes.

Even stablecoins, which most resemble the old banknotes, aren't at all like them. The means by which their issuers endeavor, with varying success, to peg their USD values, are quite unlike the contractual commitment implied by a banknote's "promise to pay the bearer on demand."

If you want to understand the real (but not necessarily fatal) shortcomings of these digital currencies, forget banknotes--and especially forget second-rate banknote history, Read what experts like @jp_koning and @lawrencehwhite1 have written about them.