I don’t have any stats or anything, but I lived in China in 2018 and would see them on my way to work. Usually amputees dressed in very sad attire with a QR code on the ground in front of them. My coworkers told me not to give them money because all the money is going to organized crime groups that manage all the beggars in town. I have no idea if this is true, but I heard it multiple times

In China where digital payments are done mostly via apps like Venmo, there are beggars with QR codes in front of them. However they’re mostly being used by organized crime rings

CBDCs would grant immense power to the state. They would know every purchase you make and have the ability to block specific transactions or even freeze your account fully. It’s an authoritarian’s dream.

Stablecoins have drawbacks too, and the state could exercise control over them somewhat. But blockchains have more property rights and privacy (although not total privacy) built into it by default. It would be much more difficult for a state to overcome those hurdles.

Totally hear you — crypto isn’t perfect, and yeah, hoarding happens just like in any system. But that’s more a human problem than a crypto one.

Crypto is a tool, and how it is used is what matters. It can be used to speculate on ridiculous monkey JPEGs, or scam people or it can be used to send money across borders without middlemen, resist censorship, and invest without being subject to the big banks.

It’s not a silver bullet, but it does open up new possibilities that the current system just doesn’t.

Don’t worry about the downvotes bro. Lemmy has a knee jerk aversion to crypto, even though the ideals of the fediverse and the ideals of crypto are very much aligned

I know lemmy is super anti-crypto, but digital dollars are probably inevitable, and stablecoins are vastly preferable to a CBDC

To take the other side (not sure I agree):

Iran is unique in that it is run by a government that claims to be Islamic fundamentalists. This could make mutually assured destruction less effective if the ones launching the nukes truly believe that if they die in the retaliation they will go to heaven with their 72 virgins.

I’m not convinced that the Ayatollah is ok dying in the name of killing infidels, but I do see the merits of this argument.