[flashyfaffe2]

"Why would I want the government to manage this when we know how to do this well without a government involved? What's the benefit of using FedCoin over using something decentralized with good monetary properties?"

Fed coin would be in fact very useful for the government itself... not sure if you have some understanding of the latest 2008 crisis and how the fed address the issue but there are many shortcomings in the solution proposed that would be easily addressed with a government backed digital currency. The main one would be , in my opinion, to be able to manage more efficiently money lent to banks. At that time the banks received a lot of money from the fed with the hope that the this money would be use to increase the loans ( and so the economy). However, banks were not very keen to follow that inventive and did not lend as expected. The point in having a digital currency would have let the fed to reward (with a lowest rates) banks playing the game. This just one example I have on the top of my mind right now, but I'm sure we can find others advantages.