
Coronavirus Stimulus Bill in Congress Proposes U.S. Digital Dollar - walterbell
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonbrett/2020/03/23/new-coronavirus-stimulus-bill-introduces-digital-dollar-and-digital-dollar-wallets
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walterbell
From
[https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/waters_146...](https://financialservices.house.gov/uploadedfiles/waters_146_xml_03.23.2020.pdf)

 _> The term "digital dollar wallet" shall mean a digital wallet or account,
maintained by a Federal reserve bank on behalf of any person, that represents
holdings in an electronic device or service that is used to store digital
dollars that may be tied to a digital or physical identity._

 _> Not later than January 1, 2021, all Federal reserve banks shall make
digital dollar wallets available to all citizens and legal permanent residents
of the United States and business entities for which the principal place of
business is located in the United States._

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haspoken
If these people can not work with checks and banks, why would you expect them
to handle an online system requiring computer and network access?

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sidpatil
Those two things aren't correlated. Lots of people without access to the
banking system have mobile phones, and services have emerged to bring them
into the system. For example, M-Pesa [0] is the first one that comes to mind.

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa)

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Finnucane
Most of our dollars are digital now, just ledgers in servers. What difference
does this make?

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leetcrew
this is my question, maybe I'm missing something. I don't see how crypto
really addresses the issues of people without bank accounts or physical
addresses. as for people who _do_ have bank accounts, why can't the government
just work with them to deposit normal cash in their accounts instead of
forcing them to implement something new?

I gotta say, I don't really understand the dem strategy right now. the failure
to agree on a stimulus package in a timely fashion reflects poorly on both
sides, but the democrats are looking especially bad. why can't they just toss
out the most controversial parts, pass something, and then come back to the
pie in the sky stuff next week?

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Finnucane
I guess it depends on what you consider 'controversial'. Part of what the
Republicans want is essentially a $500 billion blank check for Mnuchin to
spend as he pleases without strings attached, similar to the ransom note Hank
Paulson tried to get away with in 2008.

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leetcrew
I should have been a bit more clear. I'm saying both sides should table their
most controversial parts and just pass the subset they appear to agree on.
then they can go back to trying to cram student debt forgiveness and the huge
blank check for wall street into the same bill.

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naveen99
I like it. Banks money market accounts were clearly over leveraged and cannot
be trusted. Cash may as well be directly backed by the fed instead of small
bank IOU’s.

Retail learns not to over leverage after they blow out their accounts a few
times. Banks never learn because their jobs depend on them not learning.

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sschueller
Is this really the time to add all this crap? People need financial relief and
they need it yesterday. Fokus should on how to get this money to people the
quickest way possible.

