Jared Kushner Floated the Idea of a Federal Cryptocurrency, Documents Reveal (theverge.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Jared Kushner, former President Donald Trump's son-in-law who acted as a senior advisor during Trump's time in the White House, was apparently interested in the idea of whether the federal government should make a cryptocurrency in 2018. In an email to then-US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Kushner asked if he could have a group of people "brainstorm" about the government creating its own digital currency, as revealed by a Freedom Of Information Act request from CoinDesk.
Here's the email in full:
Steven --
Would you be open to me bringing a small group of people to have a brainstorm about this topic?
http://blog.samaltman.com/us-digital-currency
My sense is it could make sense and also be something that could ultimately change the way we pay out entitlements as well saving us a ton in waste fraud and also in transaction costs... The Verge report continues... The link [included in Kushner's email] goes to a 2018 blog post titled "US Digital Currency," which was written by Sam Altman, a former president of startup incubator Y Combinator and currently the CEO of OpenAI. The post discusses how the US should create a cryptocurrency and make it legal tender in the country. (While it suggests naming the coin USDC, for US Digital Currency, there actually is currently a stablecoin named USDC, short for US Dollar Coin, but that it wasn't created by the government.) Altman's post suggests that the US cryptocurrency could have taxes built-in and that building it could help give America "some power over a worldwide currency."
For his part, Kushner suggests it could be a way to cut down on waste, fraud, and transaction costs when paying out entitlements. The outcome of his request is unclear -- the emails don't show whether Mnuchin ever responded, or if there was ever a meeting about the idea.
Would you be open to me bringing a small group of people to have a brainstorm about this topic?
http://blog.samaltman.com/us-digital-currency
My sense is it could make sense and also be something that could ultimately change the way we pay out entitlements as well saving us a ton in waste fraud and also in transaction costs... The Verge report continues... The link [included in Kushner's email] goes to a 2018 blog post titled "US Digital Currency," which was written by Sam Altman, a former president of startup incubator Y Combinator and currently the CEO of OpenAI. The post discusses how the US should create a cryptocurrency and make it legal tender in the country. (While it suggests naming the coin USDC, for US Digital Currency, there actually is currently a stablecoin named USDC, short for US Dollar Coin, but that it wasn't created by the government.) Altman's post suggests that the US cryptocurrency could have taxes built-in and that building it could help give America "some power over a worldwide currency."
For his part, Kushner suggests it could be a way to cut down on waste, fraud, and transaction costs when paying out entitlements. The outcome of his request is unclear -- the emails don't show whether Mnuchin ever responded, or if there was ever a meeting about the idea.
Very cryptobro of him (Score:3)
I see the concept of turning the US dollar (or any other strong currency) floated every now and then, without any sort of explanation regarding why a government would ever want to do such a thing. At the very least, a crypto dollar would look nothing like BTC, ETH, or any other, in the sense that it would be heavily centralized.
Hell, for all intents and purposes, the US is already mostly digital these days.
Re:Very cryptobro of him (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the vast majority of crypto users are in it because they want the value of their crypto to rise, then pawn it off on someone else for more USD. It's more like a stock, and it's taxed like a stock.
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Maybe, but that already exists- its the US dollar. Write a law that requires banks to offer fixed rate transfers between accounts and you're done. The banks already have the software written, people just don't use it much.
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^^^^ This, very much.
Even in the US, where bank transfers are pretty expensive compared to the rest of the world, they're but a fraction of a regular crypto "gas fee". Same for credit cards, and 0% for cash. What's the goal of making the USD a cryptocurrency, exactly?
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If you converted the US over to a crypto, the idea is that the growth in the number of coins would be a determinable factor.
Huh? Why? I'm 100% the FED would never have that as a goal. Monetary policies change over time.
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No, *blocks* are mined. How fhis translates to actual coin tokens depend on the cryptocurrency at hand - f.ex. BTC gives you coins for each newly mined block, until the maximum number of coins is reached.
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And crypto won't fix the fees - if managed by the banks then they'll want to be paid for their managment, if managed by the government then there will be lots of people to pay for this. The idea that crypto will reduce waste, fraud, and transaction costs is absurd. Kushner probably believe the marketing of whoever is behind the push who will be making the profits.
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Most of them are designed so that miners are completely interchangeable, which does prevent them from exercising the sort of market power Visa or Mastercard do; but most of them are also designed in ways that make them pathologi
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A national crypto currency would not be based upon mining, if the government is even remotely competent. Mining for crypto is a part of the scam - creating money from nothing, letting early miners make most of the money, etc. A national currency should never be based upon printing money, but instead the currency will be backed either by the existing currency or something of stable value that will not rise or fall faster than inflation or deflation. For example, the "USDC" would logically be backed by the
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Yeah, but scammer is as scammer does.
My high-tech solution for the problem of TFG would be to give him the ultimate set of golf clubs so he'll just go away happy.
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Gee, the economy taking off after the Covid slump and the supply chain issues are somehow Wall Street's fault?
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I see the price of aluminium rising again in the future.
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I see the big profits from investing in anti-psychotic drugs as the patient base is growing!
Re: Auditability (Score:2)
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I think the idea is about not writing "checks" to social security and medicare recipients. There's a big story that it's all rife with corruption and fraud. So use the digital currency to replace that. It could eliminate the problem with checks being stolen from mailboxes (which honestly is a major problem) but you also create a new set of people who will be charging fees in order to process these transactions between dollars and the digital currency. This would not a be a bitcoin like thing designed to
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The premise of this line of humor is flawed. Scammer is as scammer does and I'm sure Jared was just hoping to be the biggest scammer in that scam. If Mnuchin had any intelligence (though I've never detected it), then he said "traceable" with wink-wink-nod-nod.
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From your link: Four days ago, the Federal Reserve released the names of the banks that had received $4.5 trillion in cumulative loans in the last quarter of 2019 under its emergency repo loan operations for a liquidity crisis that has yet to be credibly explained.
I can find stories on CNN from
They should call it digital currency not crypto (Score:3)
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Digital signing of wallets is not a bad thing.
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Digital debit card seems to be what they are looking for, only with "crypto" and "currency" tacked on because it looks cooler.
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Possibly. You can never really tell with government hacks. But if they want actual cryptocurrency then hey, that could be a good thing.
So the Party of small government (Score:5, Insightful)
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wants the government to be able to track every dollar you spend,
Let me share with you this one weird trick that allows you to avoid using crypto:
Step 1. Do not use crypto.
It's that fucking simple.
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The party of small government is the definition of conservatism. They peaked around 1994 and were slowly hijacked by the religious right which lead to the Tea Party. Nowadays the platform is pretty much obstructionist or find whatever the dems are up to do the opposite. Put a modern day republican next to Ronald Reagan and they'd be calling him a commie leftist.
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OMG not at all.
There was essentially no advocacy for small government prior to the Gingrich era. It was not at thing. The Goldwater types more or less driven out into the wilderness after the sixties. The GOP was the party of the moral majority. Regan came a long and articulated that both clearly and started to pay some not very serious lip service to limited government which evaporated entirely under George H Bush.
The religious right all but vanished during the Clinton years, and the Tea party (Taxed Eno
Re:So the Party of small government (Score:5, Insightful)
Talked to "us"? What does that mean. Every political candidate has talked to us. Maybe they were too honest, and didn't always promise impossible things like a wall that costs us nothing but will keep out literally every illegal immigrant, and yet it still ends up that the Obama administration deported more illegal immigrants than any administration including Trumps. Or the promise of jobs, the EVERY candidate has always promised, and Trump did not do a better job than any others and actually was really naive about it (he'd celebrate saving 100 jobs at a company even while a different division of the company outsource another 1000 elsewhere).
I really don't get what it was that Trump said that resonated more than what Jeb said, or Cruz, or any of the other Republican primary candidates. Trump appeared to have the weakest platform. His only value to some seemed to be that he has never been in political office (though he's run for president a few times before). The idea that lack of experience is the best qualifier possibly appeals to some, but his four years shows that being inept isn't really a good thing.
Possibly it resonates with the perennial desire to have a businessman in charge of government, because they naively think that running a country is just like running a business - you hire and fire and screw over your customers. Possibly they failed to notice just how terrible a businessman Trump was, even worse than Dubya's failing businesses.
Really there seemed to be some sort of religious obsession with Trump because there was so little substance behind him, don't need to express what they like they just know he's the promised one. And the evangelical leadership all marched behind him, held their nose at his sins with less moral fiber than Clinton, and advocated for him. The political leaders who were Mormon seemed like they were going to not endorse him but eventually most did (Romney stuck to his ideals though and did not). I think there was a feeling that the religious people just put up with Trump because they'll get good things out of it at the end, and with Pence there he can steer the president the right way. And the religious right never went away they've always been a huge Republican wing vital to winning. The religious right was huge during Clinton's admin.
Politically, Trump was a down and dirty politician just like all of them - he demanded personal loyalty and a yes-man attitude from everyone in the administration. He pulls strings and demands politicians do what he wants or he will backstab them in the next primaries. He didn't clean up the swamp instead he held mud wrestling events in it.
Really, no appeal to any of "us" that I ever saw except for the "none of the above" voting bloc who felt that what was the worst that could happen. And after seeing the worst it meant that he lost the popular vote by even more than he did the first time around to a rather bland and boring candidate.
Re:So the Party of small government (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you think neoliberalism was about?
Neoliberalism is the whole idea that government is inefficient, and most of what government does, the private sector can do better. Hence the term - it's a new version of classic economic liberalism, which was a rebuttal to mercantilism and the old order of things. To a mercantilist, government should limit imports and maximize exports. Restrictions on who could trade was a good thing. To the paleoliberals, free trade should reign supreme. (NB: Don't confuse "neoliberal" with how "liberal" tends to be used in the US. It's closer to libertarianism.)
The idea of preferring the free market to government was the campaign of both Reagan and, across the pond, Thatcher.
As Reagan said: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."
Ironically, government would grow under Reagan, including some wild projects (remember the defense project ironically nicknamed "Star Wars"?) But all in all, Reagan campaigned on the philosophy that small, limited government was better.
Later Clinton would push neoliberal policies as well, such as NAFTA.
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I'm not saying you're wrong necessarily but I remember the Religious Right being a pretty strong force in the Republican party in the mid 90's. Strictly off the top of my head I'd probably move that year back a bit, maybe 1990.
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"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them."
-- Barry Goldwater
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There's compromise and there's principle. Goldwater also stated [claremontr...fbooks.com]:
So in essence it would seem he had no argument with "those" Christians on the need, just the method.
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By "small government" that appears to mean the Trump family, friends, and assorted platinum level donors.
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Also, regardless of how you feel about him, why would you villify someone for wanting to explore how an exploding trend could potentially help the government run more efficiently.
I see emails like this all the time, this is a "hey, there's something going on here, and perhaps there is a way to harness this to solve XYZ issue we're having". It's called being curious and open minded to look for new solutions, instead of just assuming that nothing can ever be done better.
The whole point of a crypto currency (Score:3)
is that it isn't controlled by a government.
Re:The whole point of a crypto currency (Score:5, Insightful)
is that it isn't controlled by a government.
Is it? I don't think so. At the moment the whole point is that you can use it for criminal purposes, and for speculation.
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is that it isn't controlled by a government.
And everyone can see every transaction that takes place because the block ledger is OPEN.
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No, that's the point of *some* crypto currencies.
A government could do this (Score:5, Interesting)
And that is possible: You can easily create a monopoly where the only ones being able to create a CryptoDollar are the US government. Just like they are the only ones (except for criminals) who can create paper dollar bills. At practically zero cost, with the US government being the only ones having the private keys required.
That kind of thing could be a one-to-one replacement for paper dollars, or for dollars in people's bank accounts. Trading would be pointless, and there would be no speculation, because the US government will sell anyone a CryptoDollar for the price of US$1.00. It _would_ be a fiat currency.
Of course someone like Donald Trump would lose the private keys in five minutes, while Biden would forget where they are in five minutes, so this brilliant idea is dead in the water until the USA gets a competent President
Why would he want this? (Score:2, Insightful)
The last thing Kushner or his failure of a father-in-law would want is to cut down on waste fraud [forbes.com]. Not to mention all transactions would be recorded. They definitely don't want that.
Re:Why would he want this? (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Entitlement" means social security and medicare for the most part. As in you paid for it with taxes over the years so you damn well are entitled to get some of it back; the attitude used by Ayn Rand when she defended herself for taking social security payments. These are also considered entitlements because the taxes dollars collected for them are earmarked to be only used for these programs, they're separate line items on your tax forms, and they're not put into the general pot of money to be used for a
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As I was saying before some Republican snowflake tried to censor the truth...
You just have to think Republican. It's a dangerous skill to learn but very cromulent.
The phrase "...change the way we pay out entitlements as well saving us a ton in waste fraud..." is a dog whistle for "stop the welfare checks to the poor/blacks - thus government won't need to tax the rich (which is US) as much as it does".
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Or a post office bank (Score:4, Informative)
What does he know about cryptocurrencies? (Score:4, Insightful)
saving us a ton in waste fraud and also in transaction costs
Ah yes, three things cryptocurrencies are known to be low on, right? XD
Seriously I think the only things he knew about cryptocurrencies were that they were trendy and involved computers.
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What does he know about anything that led him to a "senior advisor" role? Imagine the headlines if Obama had a son in law with zero experience that he suddenly appointed to a senior advisor.
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They fail the shoe-on-the-other-foot test so often we're forced to conclude it's just raging sociopathic dishonesty.
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Dunning-Kruger (Score:5, Funny)
At some point in the near future, dictionaries will just have a picture of Jared Kushner under the description of "Dunning-Kruger Effect".
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Well, it would have to be a very tiny picture because the majority of that page will be taken up with a picture of his father in law.
proof you can be a moron and go to harvard (Score:2, Insightful)
Harvard and NYU grad huh? (Score:2)
I was struck not as much by the idea he was considering, but more by how poorly his email was worded.
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I've heard that his Harvard tutor does a better job at writing.
Anticryptobros don't realize what we have now (Score:1)
Is basically a bunch of private ledgers that are totally unaccountable instead of one big, zero trust public ledger. A lot of normies are going to be out for blood when the market crashes between 2022 and 2024, and they realize that not only did the banks repeat the frauds that lead to 2008 they quadrupled down on them. At least with a national crypto, you can hold all of your fiat dollars in a hardware wallet backed up in multiple places. Your life savings now is at the mercy of the morality of your bank's
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"Until the computers go down..." clever... /s (Score:2, Insightful)
Was this even supposed to be an intelligent take on the situation? Something like 98% of the entire US money supply is already digital. Physical cash is damn near as poorly distributed in our economy these days as tradable silver pieces like Silver Eagles, Canadian Maples and 1/4 to 1 oz silver rounds.
There is no way the modern economy could function on the current physical cash supply if the "computers went down" for an extended period of time
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The same is true right now. Unless you have a mattress full of cash it’s all numbers on someone’s computer.
Given this, I'm shocked Trump doesn't have a shit (Score:2)
coin. Especially given his PT Barnum sideshow life. Maybe that's still coming with this social media platform...
Waste and fraud (Score:2)
T****p, his corrupt offspring, co-conspirators, and hangers on want to siphon all that money into their own pockets. They are enraged when they think someone else is getting grift besides themselves. They want it all.