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asdfasveayesterday at 8:28 PM6 repliesview on HN

It boggles my mind that the government has privatized currency to these people.

Crazy-person-but-actually-really practical-idea:

Nationalize one if these networks. Maybe Discover.

The US government should provide us digital currency. The simplest way is to force the current systems to do that. All that rent they collect in terms of transactions fees shouldn't be profit for a private business but fees of the government.


Replies

Qiu_Zhanxuanyesterday at 10:11 PM

No Chance in hell, the US government is even going after Brazil because they've done the right thing. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pix_(payment_system)#United_St...

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CGMthrowawayyesterday at 8:47 PM

>It boggles my mind that the government has privatized currency to these people.

That's the banks (lenders), not the payment networks.

>Crazy-person-but-actually-really practical-idea: Nationalize one if these networks. Maybe Discover.

The central planners want to. It's called FedNow.

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Asposyesterday at 8:50 PM

Each of those networks carry a lot, a lot of ancient stuff. Gov is better off building a brand new network from scratch and promote it as a standard for banks to join.

There are plenty of great examples from this century all over the world.

Even Iran has a better payment infra than the US.

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nsvd2yesterday at 9:01 PM

Yes, let's bring the experience of waiting at the DMV or dealing with the IRS to payment systems. Great idea

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Navarryesterday at 8:34 PM

Discover was JUST purchased by Capital One, so I think they'd hate for it to be nationalized

pampastoday at 4:00 AM

It's not about US consumers but international trade. The US likes taxing the world's B2C activity.