Bank of England flirts with offline digital dosh The Bank of England has shown offline digital payment systems can work but plans to study policy choices before giving them the green light. The UK's central bank investigated a system that allows phone-to-phone, phone-to-card, and card-to-phone payments while offline, and enables the downloading and uploading of funds to and …
Even got a physical one in my pocket*.
I agree AC, it does seem an exercise in futility.
Banks and businesses do seem to hate cheques these days**, which was another "offline" payment system that worked reasonably well & was quite simple.
* to paraphrase Harold Wilson
** If I need any building work done on the house (I do not do online / phone banking & bank branches open on a weekend (I'm working weekdays) are huge distance away so bank transfers not a payment option) I always check that cheque or cash* is accepted otherwise there is no point them doing the job.
*** At least a few ATMs around so do not need a bank branch nearby to get cash, yet...
recruiter> The role pays £100,000 pa.
candidate> whoaa... for sales manager???
recruiter> Yes!
candidate> What is the catch?
recruiter> Money is only good for Amazon Prime and selected categories of products, like prostate massagers.
candidate> Ok, so how am I going to eat?
recruiter> The company is selling prostate massagers mainly, so you can plug yours after work!
candidate> Why can't I get cash?
recruiter> You can! Just sell the massagers.
candidate: What if no one wants them?
recruiter> You will be the sales manager. How hard is it to make someone want a good prostate massage?
candidate> Do you want one right now?
recruiter> That's the spirit!
And what happens if the device doesn't come back online? For example, you turn the network off on your phone, use it offline to buy a new phone in a shop with digi-quids, then just turn it off and chuck it away. By this method you just got a brand new free phone.
This dumb Sunak-era idea should be scrapped to save wasting any more real pounds on it.
"And what happens if the device doesn't come back online? For example, you turn the network off on your phone, use it offline to buy a new phone in a shop with digi-quids, then just turn it off and chuck it away. By this method you just got a brand new free phone."
Presumably you have to put some cash on your phone first, whilst online, before you can spend them offline? So I don't see how you get a free phone.
I think it'll be designed so that you can only destroy funds, not create them, by doing that. You would have to transfer some money onto the device first. Once you pay the shop with it, the shop syncs those funds back to the ledger and you have transferred them. Your bank account was already debited when you put those funds on the phone in the first place.
However, you should easily be able to permanently lose money that way. Transfer some funds to the phone because you'll be out of coverage area for a bit. Drop the phone and break it. You probably aren't getting that cash back. The best solution I can think of is having all transferred money expire after some time, so if you don't use it within a week (ideally a configurable time), it returns to your main account. That would solve the problem of losing the funds, but it also makes offline transfers harder if both sides stay offline for longer periods.
No need to sync with the network if it does act as a "super duper Oyster card".
They'll receive the funds as being "loaded" onto their device, same as they were "loaded" onto yours. Bit of bluetooth magic or some NFC & job's a good 'un.
Then they can transfer the digital funds to someone else, then the funds can go to yet another person - so long as the transfer mechanism is robust, it could be as good as cash.
Or we could all just get one of those gadgets from the Underground barriers and use existing Oyster cards.
Oyster does have a double-spend problem because you can clone the cards. But you will get caught if you try it, and the card will get blocked overnight, so TfL’s risk is limited to a Zones 1-9 daily cap.
In a groundbreaking revelation sure to stun the uninitiated, the Bank of England has confirmed that offline digital payments might work - as long as you're online again at some point. The central bank assembled a crack team of tech firms and acronyms to prove what cash has been doing flawlessly for centuries: transferring value without a signal. Of course, their version requires smartphones, Bluetooth, PINs, pseudonymisation, and a hearty dose of "confidential computing" just to simulate handing over a fiver.
Naturally, no real payments were made and no infrastructure exists, but it’s technically feasible - pending, of course, a thorough policy deep-dive into risk appetite, liability, and other bureaucracy-friendly terms. Offline payments, it turns out, are only possible with enough online scaffolding to make the word "offline" feel more aspirational than literal.
* pedestrian seeing someone crying their eyeballs off *
pedestrian> Hey dude, what happened? Are you okay?
dude> *sobs* Some... someone... someone took their magnetron out and beamed at at at my ho *sobs* house!
pedestrian> Oh, no! So what now?
dude> All My My My offline digital cash got fried!!!
pedestrian> Do you want some spare change?
dude> Can I have some spare change please?
pedestrian> Show me your digital wallet.
dude> Oh f*ck off mate!
Traditional banking has largely been made redundant by digital currencies and the blockchain, since there is no longer a requirement for a trusted intermediary.
However, while crypto self-custody is liberating, CBDCs are simply the establishment desperately trying to retain and expand control - programmable money will usher in a whole new level of NWO tyranny.
Had two short haul leisure flights this year? No steak dinner for you, because you've exceeded your annual carbon allowance!
Because when Amazon refuse to deliver...
In which case the Bitcoin blockchain ledger would reveal that they were in breach of contract and liable to face the consequences of whichever trading laws apply in the jurisdiction in question.
No involvement of an archaic thing called a bank required whatsoever. Try again.
"Why is it necessary to use a bank"
Because when one relies upon an established currency, both you and the seller understand the value of that currency at the time of making the purchase, knowing that - largely - the currency will be fairly stable and will have much the same value the day after and the day after that. This is important because that company will take that currency and either pay it on to the actual vendor (and possibly not immediately) or they will use it themselves to buy more stuff to sell. In addition the bank usually provides various additional protections. How and what depends upon the bank and the payment method.
Because when one relies upon an established currency, both you and the seller understand the value of that currency at the time of making the purchase, knowing that - largely - the currency will be fairly stable and will have much the same value the day after and the day after that.
Bitcoin, or a more technically superior equivalent, would become the established currency overnight if it were adopted by the States.
Contrary to popular belief, instability is not an inherent weakness of crypto currencies.
Traditional banking has largely been made redundant by digital currencies and the blockchain, since there is no longer a requirement for a trusted intermediary
Says some AC idiot, who sooner or later will be parted with whatever pretend money / scam coinage he has bought, and better not come crying to us about it.
Cash is distributed and anonymous.
Digital government currency is centralised.
Centralisation equals total control.
How will this centralised digital wallet handle authentication?
It’ll require you to input all of your personal data and a facial scan, all conveniently sent to the government’s centralised database.
"all conveniently sent to the government’s centralised database"
Well there's your first problem. The NHS digitisation is a sorry excuse and local councils are pissing away millions because having anything be "central" will require everybody to agree on what it is and how it works, which I highly doubt would actually come to pass except for a highly broken over-budget and far-too-late shitshow thrown together by Fujitsu...
The personal data is the least of my concerns - expiring and/or restricted-use (e.g. you can only spend this Digital Pound on food and it expires at the end of the month) along with precise financial habit tracking and the ability to un-person someone (e.g. being politically inconvenient and silently switching off any spending that might be used to travel to a protest for an identified group) is much more insidious.
