Fed Gov. Waller proposes Fed payments accounts tailored to private sector

Everyone is talking about how this is some sort of signal that the Fed wants to enable crypto innovations but I don't quite see it as that.

I think that if this becomes operational, it would be an indication of something else besides what people believe it to be.

Federal Reserve Gov. Christopher Waller has asked the central bank’s staff to review creating a payment account that could be tailored to private sector uses more limited than a master account.

At the Fed’s Payments Innovation Conference in Washington Tuesday, Waller explained how such an account could be better suited to emerging financial technology companies, and would limit the risk taken on by the central bank for such uses.

“I have asked Federal Reserve staff to explore the idea of what I’m calling a payment account,” Waller said in addressing the conference. “The payment account would be available to all institutions that are legally eligible for an account and would be beneficial for those focused primarily on payment innovations.” – Payments Dive report

One thing that has actively been discussed when regulatory steps that looks to threaten the business of the banks is involved is that President Trump is personally out to destroy the banking industry, given his reported history of being debanked.

While we can very much argue that Trump is indeed after pushing for as much reforms as possible to reduce the power of the banking system, it is also crucial that we look at what might persuade everyone against such reforms to allow them go through.

For a development such as a payments account with the Fed, which basically makes the Fed system the settlement layer, it would be a big miss on our part to not see that this would be to the merit of the government, not crypto.

It is certainly getting a little tiring that everyone seems to be chanting “government good” these days because of some pretty simple regulatory guidelines that is just designed to eventually help the government hold a third-party governance control over crypto assets, products and services.

I cannot imagine a scenario where having a payments account with the Fed would be pro-crypto.

I think that this is strategic to pull crypto innovations to a point of reliance on the government and traditional systems, still.

It's rather comical and somewhat disappointing that people don't see it. I think that the government being against crypto makes far more critical tech and solutions get built. A strategic pro-crypto government just enables centralized-layer businesses to build atop of crypto.

As I've always said, unless we can capitalize on finance migrating on-chain and move completely away from reliance on traditional systems and governance, it will all have been for nothing.

Posted Using INLEO