Ya, let's gamble the future of the U.S.'s reserve currency on the crypto-markets. 'tis nothing but yet another gamble by el Bunko. And his track record on gambling, if you don't count outright fraud, is terrible. Want to guess how this will turn out?

" European Central Bank Chief Economist Philip Lane warned that Europe must develop a digital euro"

Wow, that is not the solution, I promise. What are you thinking??

Basically, they are questioning the fact that VISA/MC - American companies - get a cut every time any European buys groceries at his local store. In Finland, not *that* long ago, we had national debit cards that were completely internal to FI and used FI brokers. These days the debit card offering is Visa Debit. (Credit was always handled by VISA/MC/Diners/Amex/etc).

Chinese have their Alipay and similar systems, so might as well set up our own system. Of course there's a bunch of mobile payment apps - but I think even those are still backed up by a credit card company. I mean, when you set up Paypal/Venmo/whatever account, the most common setup is that they ask for credit card number. You can theoretically transfer funds using wire transfer instead, but, well, then you either have to do that for every transaction or if you do a larger at once, you lose the interest.

And frankly, credit cards are just so darn convenient and come with additional protections (e.g. if you have booked a travel and the airline/hotel goes bankrupt - you get your money back from CC organization).

Spot on.

Sure it is not cricket that EU citizen are forced to bank using US credit cards.

But a digital currency is never a solution.

And why would be? I mean, the EU banking system works very well, I can transfer money to people and companies in other EU (especially euro) countries without problems or delays.

Similar works for many other developed nations, I have never had problems receiving my pay from the US, UK or Dubai and that's all without 'digital' currencies or credit cards.

Yeah, we need a digital euro like we need another russian gas pipeline.

What we could do with is a European based version of Visa/Mastercard/Paypal - *that* makes some sense.

A digital Euro makes sense. It is not a cryptocurrency, it's a real currency with a central bank and backed by governments. The digital part is just creating new ways to use Euros, that don't require going through the existing payment systems.

You can take a 10 Euro note and give it to someone else. You should be able to give someone 10 Euros digitally, without having to use a banking system. Of course you may want to use a banking system because they provide protections against fraud and extra consumer righ

> The DNS root servers are maintained by the IANA, which is part of ICANN; a nonprofit in the US. If the Trump regime decides to use that against the rest of the world, the root name servers will be set up somewhere else, but where? And who will follow and who won't? The Internet will be split up.

We will all need to install a PiHole*, and set up 4 DNSs, two in IANA and two in the alternative.

I do not live in the USoA or EU, and have already a PiHole. If an scenario like the one the OP envisions happens, a whole cottage industry of Mom&Pop companies will sell and install said PiHoles...

* Or other suitable internal DNS

DNS was devised in a time when the Internet was more family than corporation or utility. As with many of the underlying foundations of the Internet, this relies on mutual trust, respect, shared goals, and intention to achieve goals for the common good.

John Postel must be weeping. Few will stand for the better, but many will argue and complain. Some will just do not-good things.

And the world is beginning to look to the path of Balkanizing the Internet because, thankfully, the Internet is important. And not a

... and prevent people who disagree with them from being able to spend. Social credit scores in 3... 2... 1...

Why is Trump so fond of it then? [1]https://coinmarketcap.com/curr... [coinmarketcap.com]

[1] https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/official-trump/

No it's not. It's supposed to be equivalent to cash.

[1]https://www.ecb.europa.eu/pres... [europa.eu]

Of course, that whole post could be just a big lie, but if the schema allows offline transactions then there bound to be some privacy built in. Of course it comes ultimately down to trust, but if it's technically possible to transactions offline - even daisy-chained ones - there's bound to be technical means for privacy protection too.

[1] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2024/html/ecb.blog240613~47c255bdd4.en.html

"unwind the effects of Bretton Woods?"

Um, Bretton Woods died in 1976, which was only a ratification of what happened in 1971 when the US went off the gold standard.

> I mean, wasn't that the whole point of the Euro being rolled out around 1990, to allow Europe to dominate (or at least counter) US dominance in the financial markets, and unwind the effects of Bretton Woods?

Not really, those were the sensationalist headlines. The main idea was to facilitate commerce in the Euro Zone (which is different from the European Union).

The countering of the USoA dominance was, at best, a tertiary objective. But the Information sources of the era ran with it, because it sold more newspapers.

What exactly is the Democrat alternative? The Global Transgender Peso?

The English pound sterling was the dominant reserve banking currency for centuries.

We lost that status because something more reliable came along.

Guess how easily the US dollar could lose being the dominant reserve banking currency with this nonsense, when the second-oldest central bank in the world couldn't hold onto that status for a country after hundreds of years of holdin git.

Cryptocurrency massively centralizes the information about all transactions.

This is broadly true about all current workable digital currencies. Every cryptocurrency system needs a public ledger to limit how much fraud happens, but bad actors will use the log of transactions against people.