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FedCoin on Ethereum (Market Monday - Lite)
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FedCoin on Ethereum (Market Monday - Lite)

Market Monday for March 30, 2020

Ryan Sean Adams
Mar 31, 2020

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Dear Crypto Natives,

Things are moving faster now. We’re in the new normal.

The trends birthed in the 2010s? Populism, money printing, digitization, wealth gaps, state surveillance, cryptocurrency. They just hit the accelerator.

So did the trend toward central bank digital currency.

If you’re the U.S. government and your primary economic rival rolls out a central bank digital currency you have to respond with your own. Superpower A get nukes so Superpower B get nukes. That’s the way the game theory pans out.

And make no mistake: fiat currency is an economic weapon. Do you know why the greenback was originally created? To help Lincoln win the war against the South.

But even though China’s new central bank digital currency means a U.S. FedCoin is inevitable at some point, the Fed could afford to wait—that’s a perk of being the central bank behind the world’s reserve money.

Some wanted the U.S. to move faster. Then last year Zuckerberg goes in front of Congress and says—“hey guys if you don’t compete with China’s new coin then Facebook will”.

Gas on the fire. Yet still not enough for the Fed to move on a digital currency.

Enter coronavirus.

Things have changed since Zuckerberg’s Congressional hearing.

In the corona-era the Fed will do whatever it takes to rescue the economy. Unlimited money. Nothing is out of the question—even buying equity ETFs.

But what will it take? What do central banks do after interest rates hit zero and after they buy up their nations stock market?

The next weapons upgrade for central bankers is the ability to go negative on interest rates. Deeply negative maybe. Negative rates means your bank savings account isn’t delivering positive return or even a zero returns—it’s delivering a negative returns.

It costs you to keep money in the bank. So you have to spend it or it’s gone.

This is the ultimate spending stimulant to some central bankers. Liquidity is forced.

Imagine having to pick the savings account that loses you the least per year.

So what prevents central bankers from doing this today?

Physical cash does.

Twitter avatar for @RyanSAdamsRyan Sean Adams - rsa.eth @RyanSAdams
Central banks can't do aggressive negative rates while cash exists Why? Say you drop rates to -5% People just hoard cash, they withdraw it all from banks Bankers first need to replace cash w/ digital cash Corona accelerated the inevitability of central bank digital cash

March 18th 2020

5 Retweets33 Likes

Lincoln’s Greenback has to go.

In order to upgrade their economic weaponry central bankers need to eliminate physical cash and replace it with digital cash.

Not politically tenable? Neither was UBI. Hard to see the Fed doing this?Nothing is out of the question, remember?

Maybe all it would take is a narrative campaign that physical cash is a coronavirus transmission vector. “Digital cash saves lives.”

Let’s fast-forward.

So let’s assume central banks kill cash, they convert to digital currencies, some of them give citizens direct access to Federal bank accounts and some of them keep commercial banks and big tech companies as a go-between.

Does this mean blockchains win?

They don’t need a public blockchain for this first step.

Each economic power will want a separate money network—their own separate version of FedWire. Because none will trust the other to control the settlement network for something as important as their sovereign currency. The power over SWIFT is the power to sanction and control.

But what happens when they want to trade? What happens when they want to settle transactions in a neutral network? To interoperate? To do global finance?

For that they need a network that isn’t controlled by nation state, that cannot be censored. A credibly neutral settlement layer. A money network of money networks.

Twitter avatar for @RyanSAdamsRyan Sean Adams - rsa.eth @RyanSAdams
China will deploy it's digital currency network USA will deploy it's digital currency network Europe will deploy it's digital currency network And eventually they'll all settle on a credibly neutral asset network that none of them own They'll settle on Ethereum

March 24th 2020

84 Retweets586 Likes

That’s why I think central bank digital currencies will end up as sidechains for the public asset blockchain—sidechains to Ethereum.

Why?

Because Ethereum is the only poly-asset settlement network that doesn’t require the trust of a competing nation-state. It’s the only network they can all use without giving up their sovereignty.

It’s the common denominator.

It’s the internet of money.

FedCoin on Ethereum

No, a FedCoin on Ethereum wouldn’t be trustless. Issuance, whitelisting, identity, surveillance—all could be controlled by nation-states through ERC20-style programming logic. FedCoin would not serve as a non-sovereign cryptocurrency.

But each FedCoin settlement on Ethereum would increase of the value of Ether. Each transaction would increase Ethereum’s economic bandwidth and its security.

By deploying to Ethereum FedCoins make the bankless money system stronger.

Central bank digital currencies are inevitable yes. But wouldn’t it be wonderfully ironic if these tools of control became a main factor in strengthening the open crypto money system?

Be careful of adopting digital communication it might lead to Arab Spring.

Be careful of adopting digital money it might lead to a bankless revolution.

- RSA


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🎙️NEW EPISODE

Listen to episode 5 | iTunes | Spotify | YouTube | RSS Feed



MARKET MONDAY:

Scan this section and dig into anything interesting

Market numbers

  • ETH slightly lower to $133 from $138 last Monday

  • BTC down a hair to $6,475 from $6,568 last Monday

  • DAI stability fee steady at .5% with savings rate steady 0%

Market opportunities

  • (Lend) new rates on BlockFi—ETH up to 4.5% & BTC up to 6% next month

  • (Mint) “real” gold NFTs from DGX gold tokens (cool idea)

  • (Sell) generate and sell a personal token (automate tactic #19)

  • (Give) Gitcoin matching grant to a worthy project (Bankless Translations here)

  • (Borrow) Bitcoin and get DAI at Ledn—2% DAI bonus 🇨🇦(have not tried)

  • (Borrow) Against Gold using PAXG and Nexo (article about it)

  • (Earn) Interest on Compound using Coinbase Wallet App

  • (Pay) Deposit and Withdraw using ETH Today

  • (Pay) Eidoo rolling out a crypto debit card

  • (Invest) in Sets using cTokens (earning interest while investing)

  • (Save) time lock your Ethereum assets (warning beta!)

  • (Transact) another tool to create multi-step DeFi transactions

  • (Hedge) ETH downside with new Opyn hedge options

  • (Earn) aggregator of opportunities to earn BTC and ETH from CoinGeko

New stuff

  • New Synthetix’s release tomorrow (new snyths for Oil & S&P Global1200)

  • UMA priceless oracles (like an optimistic rollup for Oracles)

  • New stuff the Uniswap V2 Oracle will enable

  • Search index of decentralized web

  • NiftyGateway is a new NFT exchange by Winklevoss twins

What’s hot

  • DeFi Saver released a dashboard to liquidate CDPs

  • Balancer raised $3m in (AMA with Balancer)

  • See how Uniswap LPs on the DAI/ETH pair are hedged against ETH

Money reads

  • If coronavirus is war—here’s what governments at war do - Ray Dalio

  • The Government is Bailing Out Investors & Managers Not You - Taleb

  • Gold doing well in the cornavirus era (how to buy gold in crypto)

  • The Trust Spectrum (a different lens on this) - MultiCoin

  • Slides on what’s going on in macro & crypto - Pantera

  • Academic Report on Bankless Stack (nice job prof!) - University of Basel


WHAT I’M DOING & WHAT YOU’RE DOING

Check out a few cool things I’m capturing right now in crypto


WEEKLY ASSIGNMENT:

Make time to complete this assignment before next week


Extra Credit Learning


Some recent tweets…

Twitter avatar for @RyanSAdamsRyan Sean Adams - rsa.eth @RyanSAdams
When a small group of people have the unchecked power to issue money they’re going to issue it to themselves and their cronies And that’s exactly what’s they’re doing

March 29th 2020

15 Retweets96 Likes
Twitter avatar for @RyanSAdamsRyan Sean Adams - rsa.eth @RyanSAdams
Fed printing? Buy ETH

March 27th 2020

10 Retweets171 Likes

Actions

  • Execute any good market opportunities you saw

  • Complete weekly assignment: convert DAI to private ZKDai

  • Listen to episode 5 on Bankless Podcast


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Aave protocol is a decentralized, open-source, and non-custodial money market protocol to earn interest on deposits and borrow assets. It also features access to Flash Loans, an innovative DeFi building block for developers to build self liquidations, collateral swaps, and more! Check it out here.


Not financial or tax advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This newsletter is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.


Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. I’ll always disclose when this is the case.

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