A Democratic Digital Dollar: A Peer-to-Peer Savings & Payments Platform for Fully Inclusive State, Local, and National Money & Banking Systems

Abstract

Many units of government see a need for more inclusive money, payment, and retail banking systems for the capture, storage, and transfer of spendable value among their constituents. Currently proliferating payments platforms, most provided by for-profit private sector entities, exclude too many people, and extract too much value in the form of needless transaction charges and other rents, to be up to the task of efficiently affording this essential commercial and financial utility to the full public on sensible terms. This document sketches a smart-device-accessible peer-to-peer (‘P2P’) platform – the ‘Digital Dollar Platform’ – which, thanks to new payment technologies, can easily be put into place and administered by any unit of government with a view to supplying this critical commercial and financial infrastructure to all of its constituents. Through the familiar legal mechanism of ‘compacting,’ moreover, subnational state and local units of government can progressively ‘build the platform out’ until the Fed or Treasury take it fully federal for all citizens, businesses, and approved residents of the US. The plan also is readily adapted to use in other jurisdictions, notably the Eurozone.