NetEqualizer News Blog

What if we created  a new electronic currency a-la Bitcoin with a twist.   Let’s start by taking an idea from the Federal Government, and put a water mark on our personal funds , something unique that signifies who legally possesses the currency. Cattle ranchers do this with a brand so nobody steals their cattle.  This has worked pretty well for a few hundred years right ?

With our new personal watermark, suppose somebody breaks into your bank, and wires all your money to some idiot in Russia. In today’s world the only way to find that money is to follow the trail, and that takes a huge effort from a banking forensics person, working with International governments.  The money may travel so fast it may not be possible to recover. Now, suppose the funds had an electronic tag that could not be altered by a criminal.   For example currency in your possession  has  a public private encryption key, and only you can authorize a change in possession.

I am not going to spend any more effort on the mechanics of currency ownership, suffice to say it could be done in many different ways. The problem with my proposed solution is the resistance it will meet from all sides.

• The privacy crowd, will beat the drum and scare ignorant people  into thinking that the government will know how much money they have. The flaw with this argument is , unless you are underground and dealing in cash now, every bank transaction you have ever made is visible to the government. In essence, there is no net change here in terms of privacy. I’d also be fine with an optional cash currency for those that want to opt out, I don’t really care. For tax paying citizens with nothing to hide there is no new privacy downside to watermarking your funds.
• The security industry will backdoor fight this tooth and nail. As I alluded to in a previous article , the security business has grown to a magnitude of scale well beyond the assets they protect. In other words the security industry is extorting more funds than the actual threat they are protecting you against.
• Mexico, a country that does 80 billion plus in the drug trade, has no interest in traceable funds. Someplace, some-where, they  will lobby against this change, under the guise of some legitimate reason.
• Politicians and their donors. Despite the rhetoric, there is absolutely no incentive to make this process transparent.