| HN Mirror

Who controls the central bank in Brazil? Who can implement changes to this system? How much PII is recorded with each transaction and who can view it?

From https://www.bcb.gov.br/en/about/faq

BCB is a governmental institution, composed mainly of career civil servants hired rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. They answer to the government, not a political party.

The Complementary Law No. 179/2021 defines a four-year term for the nine members of the BCB’s Board of Governors that does not coincide with the term of office of the President of the Republic, as well as establishes the rules for the dismissal of the Board’s members.

The personal information and the information related to the operation (value etc.) transmitted in Pix is protected by banking secrecy, as governed in Complementary Law 105, and in the provisions of the General Data Protection Law.

All transactions take place through digitally signed messages that travel in encrypted form.

Cool, career bureaucrats who get paid by the government and can’t be held accountable by the people. Nothing could possibly go wrong there.

ronsor 1116 days ago

Yes, I really do prefer corporate executives who also can't be held accountable by the people.

Ever notice how the US government was set up as a group of competing powers? Or how parliamentary systems have similar competition between parties, a senate, and the monarchy or wtvr? It’s almost like you can’t trust any one group with power no matter where they derive their power from.

Don’t forget ‘what happens when the gov’t changes to someone who doesn’t like you’

Spivak 1116 days ago

I usually chalk that up to "if that happens I have bigger issues" because such a government could just seize my bank accounts and suddenly I have nothing.

I say that as someone whose government currently doesn't like them.

If you have cash, gold, or whatever, they’d have to find them first, so you’d have a chance.

If everyone is using gov’t e-currency, you’d not have that option.

anonporridge 1115 days ago

The big difference is that in a cashless society where everyone is on the same digital banking system, an abusive leader can delete large minorities of people from participation in the system with the stroke of a key. If they wanted to do that today, it would require a much larger commitment of resources that's going to be harder to justify and execute on, and more easily fought against.

Many of the arguments for privacy focused technologies is not that it should be impossible for the government to infiltrate or disrupt your life, but that it should be somewhat impossible for the government to infiltrate or disrupt millions of people's lives for the tiny cost of some compute cycles. The former is necessary for law enforcement. The latter is a recipe for genocide.

lazide 1115 days ago

Exactly.

Also, thinking of it from a systems reliability perspective it’s a massive Single Point of Failure.

That system stops working (due to kleptocracy, or shitty rules, or a mistake) and literally the largest economy in the world grinds to a halt nearly instantly.

It would make the days of dealing with cash (which has it’s hassles) seem like Utopia.

yesbut 1116 days ago

I'm not familiar with Brazil's system, but moving a central bank to being democratically controlled is betterbthan leaving this in the hands of a private company. The US central bank isn't currently democratically controlled, but it could be. Then collectively we could decide how a Brazil type system should function. People are better served when their banks aren't run for-profit.

Until it’s politically uncool to be you, and the gov’t bans your ability to buy food. The Nazi’s got elected in their first time, democratically (ish).

elzbardico 1116 days ago

If the nazis take power, and you happen to be one of their targets, having cash won't help much when your photo is being displayed everywhere with wording saying there's a bounty on your head as a dangerous terrorist.

But guess what makes it easier to identify and target individuals? Being able to do something like SELECT * FROM transactions WHERE recipient like ‘synagogue’

What's stopping someone to doing exactly that in the current system?

Brother fckn nazis taking the government is a much bigger systemic problem that no financial system can protect against.

The system works if democracy works. If we lose democracy, of course, the blocks built on top of it would crumble. That does not means everyone should stop building on top of democracy. Even more so for things that makes the life of the people better.

No, making it so you can’t buy anything without the gov’ts permission makes it not only more tempting for someone like Nazi’s to take over, but also much more effective for them to keep it and far more damaging when they’re in. Germany is a strongly ‘cash’ society partially because of this, but also because of what the Stasi did to East Germany.

You really don’t want the folks in power to have even more of that kind of power, no matter how convenient it is most of the time.

At least Visa/MasterCard, etc. mainly just care about making money. The gov’t doesn’t even have to care about that!

Using ‘we’re currently in a democracy’ to justify creating an even more tempting and likely to be abused tool of oppression is not a good idea.

A central payment system is absolutely not a tool of oppression. Case in point: don't like it? Don't use it. People are still free to not use it just like it even didn't exist. For everyone that chooses to, there is now an instant and free payment method. Where is the oppression?

In your hypothetical scenario of nazis taking the gov, lets assume there is no central database. Nazis would go: ok banks give me your databases or else. Banks gives databases because they care about money. There, now nazi have central database. And in this scenario you have deprived the people of enjoying a really nice service.

Where is the win here I don't see it. Let's not do good thing because, oh, in a doomsday scenario good thing might be bad. Like, shouldn't we channel efforts in ensuring doomsday never comes to reality in the first place? This way we all enjoy good life with ever improving services.

Important comment: PIX is not a bank killer and isn't designed this way. Banks still exist in Brazil and they rake in pornographic profits just like everywhere else. The absolute majority of the banks profits here does not comes from payments processing fees. The fees exist to cover the transaction operating cost. Since for PIX there is a much much lower operating cost, it makes the service free for people and businesses! The ones losing here aren't banks, but credit cards companies.

neves 1116 days ago

Brazil Central Bank has a well paid and competent bureaucracy. The very successful PIX payment was its initiative, but the gov in power tried to pretend it was their.

BTW, Brazil Central Bank now is "independent", that is, their president was indicated by the looser candidate can do what he wants. In USA at least they respond to Congress.

There should be no central bank.

Now THAT's going cashless, like, literally.

JCharante 1116 days ago

3 million ops in 1 month, 30 days per month = 100,000 ops per 24 hours (on average) = 4166 ops per hour = 69.4 ops per minute = ~more than 1 op per second. I think we really should have such a system (Vietnam has something like this) but I wouldn't use it as an example just yet.

https://www.bis.org/publ/bisbull52.htm

rsaesha 1115 days ago

I will never condemn caution, even more so for financial systems.

International institutions such as the Bank of International Settlements have recognized PIX as a successful case:

A similar service has been prepared for years, and US Federal Reserve will launch FedNow this July:

https://explore.fednow.org/

propogandist 1116 days ago

CBDC is being evaluated by pretty much every countries central bank. Governments are eager to roll out Central Bank Digital Currency as it will be the ultimate form of control on citizens.

CBDC will allow govts, at their discretion, connect your money to your ‘good citizen score’ (much like China’s Social Credit Score) and lock you out of society.