the government should be freaking out about the potential implications of this tech. but they aren't. at all. not even a wiff of it. firmly in the ignore stage.
Implications? Freaking out?
It makes tax laws almost unenforceable. Not entirely because if you work at mcdonalds and buy yourself a boeing 747 for personal use one day they might just have some questions. But in a lot of cases it does.
They could still jail you. Fine you. Disrupt every aspect of your life that's not financial.
Alternatively, if StateCoin comes to pass, they'll just centralize the hardware / network and then there will be no way to AVOID tax laws if you use statecoin (and you'll have to if it becomes == USD), because the taxes are the transaction / mining fees. Unfortunately, this is the equivalent of a sales tax, which are not progressive.
We already have USD-Tethers there's no point to StateCoin. And there is a way to avoid tax laws if you don't cash out USD-Tethers or any coin for fiat, making you liable to said tax laws. Don't play in their sandbox if at all possible and instead play on this here nice beach we have
No, by "statecoin" I mean a private crytpocurrency network run by the state, on specialized hardware.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/federal-reserve-bitcoin-strategy/
i.e., its just like bitcoin in every respect except you can't mine it. no one can mine it except the federal reserve. You can have a wallet software to access your accounts on the ledger. Its still a cryptocurrency. The same hashing and ledger storage will be done, but just centralized. Every existing federal reserve location will be a node / mining farm.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Federal_Reserve_branches
THIS, imo, is inevitable.
Yes, and no. There is inherent risk for states running their own specialised coin and network. Imagine a smaller state with less funds. Another rogue state could attack the coin. Heck, even a multinational company could attack such a coin.
On a larger scale, such as any of the G7 nations, this could still apply. Rogue states attacking other rogue states. And US is inherently a rogue state, according to many thought leaders.