Digital dollars. Digital yen. Digital Euro. Digital Pesos. Digital naira.

Really? Is that really what the crypto world needs?

In theory, it's a great idea for your government to build its own cryptocurrency.

It would make payments for stuff a lot easier and faster. It would limit money laundering and fraudulent acts that thrive on having physical money. We would no longer have to carry money around everywhere we go, and paying for stuff would be easy peasy.

But what about the terrible aspects? The parts that no one wants to talk about?

(First off, one seriously terrible aspect would be the fact that there would be no more finding loose change on the floor. Bummer, but I digress)

The first terrible side effect that we all overlook is centralisation. The blockchain is all about DE-centralisation. Removing the power from one entity and sharing it among the masses.

Imagine if the US minted digital dollars. Then there would obviously be no limit to the amount of dollars they would mint, because they would bring their old ideas to the new space.

They would just mint new digital dollars to solve new problems, and since the money is so easily made, they won't even bother thinking about inflation or any of that stuff. They'd just mint away. Of course nothing would be backing their minted dollars. We won't want the dollar to have actual VALUE now, would we?

Now many would cite Ripple and Stellar as highly centralised currencies, and I totally agree. But believe me, I would take private centralised money to keep in my pocket over government centralised money any day of the year.

This is the reason Libra is such a threat to governments of the world. Facebook has more users than America has people, and putting such power into "private centralised" form would be devastating for the hold the government currently has over citizens.

Ripple can go on printing XRP forever if they so wish. They don't have the power over the millions of people the government does. Not everyone uses Ripple. But everyone would have to use the digital currencies of their countries. The harm is greater than the intended good.

Next up, the blockchain won't be centralised anymore. The government would want to have full control over the blockchain, because the government is all about control.

All transactions would have to be tracked, and of course the government's transactions can't be put in a public ledger.

The government would also have to tax our transactions on the blockchain, because minting money infinitely isn't enough. They would charge taxes on sending and receiving money, just like they do now with international transfers.

I can see good parts to having a digital version of our current fiat. But let's not forget the bad parts.

This new revolution of money is best carried out without the government in it.

Thank you for reading.