> and then make it the e-dollar

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but isn't most of our money already digital? What do we gain, other than exchange fees if we want paper dollars and cheques?

Ideally, no transfer fees I suppose and universal access for every citizen which was supposed to be one of the distinguishing points compared to say credit cards.

It would have the potential to cut a lot of the middlemen out. I always found it curious that with cash we basically take it for granted that there's a ubiquitous, legally guaranteed payment infrastructure but with digital currencies it's more like a splintered set of services that take a quite considerable cut.

Also a very practical, relevant case. In a situation like this corona crisis, there'd be a trivial way to send everyone their 1200 bucks.

A lot of that is more a failing of the US financial system than financial systems in general, of course.

In my country (Australia), our Government could deposit money into the bank account that paid their last tax return with in less than a day... We have no transfer fees and real-time transfers (you can link a phone number to your account too). For international, things like TransferWise are pretty compelling and have crazy low fees...

There are people who don't have and cannot open bank accounts, especially in third-world countries. Cryptocurrencies (I'm talking about Bitcoin and friends) give them a way to receive money from anywhere in the world and store it safely.

A digital currency needs an infrastructure to run on, so there will be always fees of some sort. Credit cards have fees, Bitcoin has fees.

Those middlemen run the federal reserve. Good luck trying to remove banks from power without migrating to a different currency altogether.

What do you mean digital? Every number in yhe digital realm is currently backed by an asset or a reserve currency like the USD.

Sure, transactions are digital, but the underlying nature is still physical.

There are dollars that only exist as digital entries in the Fed's books and don't correspond to any physical printed bills. There is no fundamental "physical" backing for USD anymore.

USD is already a digital currency.

It’s certainly not. The money multiplier is a very basic macroeconomic concept. Almost very little of all the “money” is actually grounded in a tangible form. For all intents and purposes, almost all money is indeed digital.

It’s not digital as a cryptocurrency, but more as rows in database tables.

As a simple example, if everyone wanted to withdraw their money, all at once, very few people would actually be able to.

> Given that it seems like Libra wants to be an actual currency and comply with pretty much the demands of a national currency, which is to say stability, availability of monetary policy, features to clamp down on terrorism finance and compliance with domestic law, wouldn't it be much more sensible to elevate this entire project from Facebook to a national one?

Having it tied to the US dollar would be a huge pain. Many of us live elsewhere and use other currencies; also using dollars brings in a huge regulatory regime that people may not want to be involve with (e.g. if buying/selling Libra means I have to file a US tax return then it's a non-starter for me).

> Get more economists on board to design the institutional infrastructure, people to get the legal compliance right, and then make it the e-dollar. (or something more global in cooperation with other states). Isn't this at the end of the day what people want out of this, the digital equivalent of a normal currency?

What are those people going to bring to the table that Facebook et al aren't already doing? They have a bunch of major payment networks involved, they've got the institutional connections and huge legal compliance departments already. Being tied to a particular national government would likely be more of a handicap than a help, as the project would then be exposed to much bigger political considerations.

Would central bank digital currencies (CBDC) be better than stablecoins? Yes, but governments still aren't issuing them.

They are. Look at the stimulus plans all over the world. They’re not printing notes for these.