You can't transfer USD electronically without using banks or third-party services that are trying to skim basis points off the entire economy. In theory a well-implemented FedCoin could be more neutral and efficient.
That's not a limitation of USD. If the Fed wanted to create an API that let you do that and sidestep banks, they could. (And if they couldn't because a government agency can't casually destroy an industry like that, that restriction applies to FedCoin, too.)
Indeed, and I think an implementation of "FedCoin" would probably be better off without a blockchain, given that you're trusting the government anyway.
There's no reason at all the government couldn't give every citizen a bank account and let them wire funds to each other. In fact this used to be exactly the case: any citizen could walk into the Post Office and open a savings account [1]. Like most services that didn't benefit the rich and actually benefited the poor it got shutdown once the neoliberals took over in the 70s. Nowadays 7-10 percent of the population is unbanked and forced to rely on criminal pay day lenders, check cashers or hiding money in their cars.
FedCoin would have one benefit though over a traditional banking system and that is surveillance. It'd be very interesting to have a public, error-free record of eactly how much money each citizen is receiving or has. If it ever did happen and people could see in perfect black and white just how ridiculously unequal the country is I don't think the republic would survive much longer after that.
Which is why this article is kinda hilarious. Even the central bankers, supposedly the smartest men on the planet, don't grasp that this is the whole reason private banks exist: to obfuscate cash and risk flows. Like that's the point [3]. We wouldn't have an economy if private banks couldn't do their thing. An economy based on any kind of public ledger without private banking (and private ledgers) would be radically different.