What is the point of a digital dollar? Do they allocate a span of normal currency serials and not bother to print them?

Social credit score. Stimulus that disappears if you don’t spend it the right way. Ability to freeze your accounts / take money out. Etc. mostly about control / power.

A combination of resume driven development for those involved and a desire for more power/control. FedNow with a GA of next summer solves for instant payments. FedAccounts (citizen accounts held at the Fed) would solve for direct cash payment policy but it’s untenable in the US because of the Fed’s desire to support commercial banks over a more utility approach to financial infra, so using deposit account info on file with the IRS and the Treasury solves for targeted fiscal policy maneuvers (helicopter money or stimulus payments).

If someone is trying to sell you on programmable money, ask them exactly what they’re trying to solve for. Lot of crypto words in the press release for example.

I thought the problem with even FedNow was that it's still domestic only. Perhaps a parallel "digital dollar" platform can have a more global reach.

The US Dollar is still the backup currency of a lot of the world, and being able to say "here's a means to access our stable currency without trying to get worn-to-tissue paper notes from a sketchy exchange dealer" plays well into that narrative.

Of course, it's likely that when China said there were plans for a Digital Yuan, we had to match it.

That’s not a digital dollar issue though. That’s a digital wallet issue. China could issue wallets that allow citizens of other countries to hold yuan if they wanted. Cross fiat transfers are pretty easy to address (consider TransferWise but built and coordinated with central banks).

Instant payments, targeted cash transfers, tiered interest accounts and the like. It’s a highly flexible policy tool.