Beppe Grillo: we are ready for a national digital currency

The Italian Digital Coin
Beppe Grillo, October 8, 2020
Source: http://www.beppegrillo.it/la-moneta-digitale-italiana/
 

 

of G51LL0 - "2150. What are these? I haven't seen any since my great-grandfather's time. What are they called? Euro? Did they really go around with these pieces of coloured paper in their pockets?

Do you ever think that in 2020 there was still no e-Lira, the Italian digital currency? Many countries in those years were starting to keep up with the times, people were already talking about digital coins, cryptocurrencies, Blockchain, artificial intelligence, and the economists of the time were still talking about GDP, tangible goods and Spreads! The most sophisticated technologies had been present for years but these pieces of paper were still circulating in Italy. How is it possible that they did not understand the transformation that was taking place? My great-grandfather used to tell me: "Today's economy is studied in books from the 50s, with theories from the 1800s!

Yet on his Blog my great-grandfather dealt with the theme of digital coins countless times. In those years Facebook took its first steps with his Libra, as did China, which was starting to experiment in 4 cities, or Sweden with its e-Krona. Also the French central bank announced in those years the beginning of an experimentation of its digital currency. And in Italy they were still debating the lowering of VAT as the only solution! It was crazy!

They did not understand that a digital currency, obviously for internal use, would give an important boost to the relaunch of consumption, reducing to zero the time of disbursement and the question of creditworthiness, which had always held back the banks.

They did not understand that the revolution lay in e-Lira, a virtual circuit for real purchases, guaranteed by blockchain technology, which could provide non-repayable credits, perhaps convertible after a number of years.

They did not understand how a part of the resources that the government wanted to give non-repayable could be used to guarantee these digital credits. In this way there would be 10 times the speed of consumption! There was no need for any investigation other than the creation of the digital account. Any natural person with Spid could have their digital account connected. Ditto for businesses.

It's amazing how they didn't notice the incredible advantage it could mean for businesses, traders and craftsmen, and how it would lead to zero bureaucracy for credit disbursement. The only requirement was the opening of the account. At the moment when these credits would have turned between businesses, citizens and PA, it would not be necessary to evaluate the guarantees because they could not be accumulated, these credits would turn, turn! No one would have had any interest in holding them steady and they would have acted as an accelerator of consumption, exclusively internal consumption as per European constraints.

The State would have had in its hands an anonymous monitoring in real time, at Big Data level, on how these credits were spent and last but not least, it would have cut off the underworld and all the underworld.

Without thinking of tax "games" such as the reduction of VAT or the movement of money by our citizens, which many foreign sales platforms were doing in those years in foreign countries by dumping.

After all, the issue that was not understood was simple and was based on two principles: non-cumulation and the obligation to use credits only for domestic consumption. These two combined factors would have acted as an accelerator, because the only way to use these credits was to spend them. Then, after the time set by the government, they could be converted into Euros, but once the circuit was started, there would be few who would ask for the conversion.

So, these are the beginnings of e-Lira, the first Italian digital currency and the advantages that few people realised in 2020... but that today, as for Universal Income, we can fully benefit from it... thanks to the courage of some visionaries!".