[logicalmonster]

Good list, and I'd add something crazy sounding to the long list of potential nightmare problems with some kind of future centralized digital currency: forced spending through expiring money.

Keynesian economists that dominate a lot of official politics have a hard-on for viewing consumption as the root of all goodness and prosperity. In the midst of a future economic crisis with a central digital currency, it would be trivial for the politicians to start blaming a lack of spending for the problems and to force people to spend received money within X amount of time or it disappears from your digital wallet and thereby incentivize desired behavior. No real saving for the future possible: citizens would be turned into a cattle-like consumption class.

[sterlind]

inflation is literally expiring money. I guess the difference is you could expire some but not all money, but what's to keep me from spending my expiring money on equity or something?

[logicalmonster]

With a central digital currency, they could presumably dictate what kinds of items could be bought and sold.

If their goal was to spur consumption, they could block some types of investment from some or all people at any random time.

We already have different legal classes of investors based on wealth: you effectively need at least 25K in a broker to be able to day-trade, and the requirements to get a designation of accredited investor are even more substantial.

It would make it trivial to assign different rights based on wealth in a digital system and use it to enforce policy.

It’s an authoritarian’s dream.