What if the UK distributed a digital wallet to each of it’s citizens…

It’s 2008 the sub-prime mortgage market has collapsed and banks aren’t lending. The government needs to get some juice back into the economy and get people spending. It doesn’t want the citizen to lose out simply because of mistakes made at the higher echelons of society.

So what does the UK government do?? It decides to distribute an ID, with a digital wallet with digital sterling to each and every person. Rather than distributing 375bn GBP to the banks and allowing this money to trickle down to the general population after several years, it decides to equally distribute this money to each person and allow it to be consumed by the economy from the bottom up. This will benefit each person and this distributed ledge technology will allow expenses to be recorded and recognized by governments (and the regulator). The regulator defines all swaps holding and assets to be recorded and issues on top of the blockchain – it could have a realtime view of the ownership of all such assets (instead of financial filings which are less accurate and timely). Financial institutions would then transfer those assets/liabilities from one another in electronic form, and have its records in the blockchain which would both save money and time on multiple proprietary IT systems and give complete visibility and control for both the regulator and FI’s of those financial assets.

This will enable people to both hold GBP and pay with GBP to companies and individuals without the need of financial intermediaries, creating a seamless, frictionless means of financial transactions.

The individual will feel they are determining their own financial future and the future of those around them, rather than left feeling helpless and that they live in a boom and bust financial cycle.

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