[unabridged]

>So, instant payments are coming in the next 18 months [3] (it is actively in testing currently with a handful of participants), and free accounts for everyone is a stroke of legislative pen. What's blockchain solving?

Blockchain will still solve the problem of currency losing value by unlimited printing.

You should be thinking about what problems will retail banking and payment processors be solving. An easy to use CBDC will render many of them unnecessary.

[toomuchtodo]

You are trying to solve a policy and government concern with technology, attempting to avoid a currency controller from debasing the currency. If the government, through regulation or legislation, prohibits distributing your own currency, you can't prevent monetary policy by way of operating your own currency (in this case, crypto). Guns and laws > your crypto node.

Tangentially, its strange to me that people believe that imaginary money (fiat) should always maintain the same amount of value, when it's an economic tool and not a store of value. The entire point of devaluing a currency is to encourage investment in productive assets while stoking consumption.

[unabridged]

The US government currently doesn't care if I sell billions of USD and buy JPY instead, as long as I pay the proper taxes and they can see the transaction. I imagine crypto will be treated the same way, they just want to monitor the on/off ramps. Stablecoins are just a giant decentralized on/off ramp which they wish to bring into compliance.

[toomuchtodo]

Yes, very true. Crypto is a symptom of 1. the desire to move value for illicit transactions, 2. the desire to move value faster, and 3. the desire to speculate on an asset. Domestic instant payments and faster international payments solve for #2, but if crypto's benefit is only illicit payments, I don't see much of a future for it except to gamble on the possibility of appreciation (digital gold). AML/KYC isn't going away.

Stablecoins aren't an improvement over rows in a database held by a trusted and regulated entity and messages moving between queues for value transfer, but it'll take time for the hype train to run out of steam. I assume boredom will take hold once the ramps are heavily regulated, private wallets are outlawed, there's no more money to be made speculating and pumping/dumping shit coins, etc.

[sergefaguet]

Unfortunately what you refer to as a “problem of currency losing value” is a feature for a government, not a bug. They want this because it allows them an additional path to taxation by diluting all existing holders of fiat.

The only way to prevent being diluted is to not hold fiat and end up in a situation where it is held only by government beneficiaries, i.e. that the government is inflating to pay people affected by inflation. Then their ability to inflate is de facto obliterated.