Title: The Coming US Digital Dollar (Part 1) — What it is, and Why it Matters | by Garrick Hileman | @blockchain | Medium
Headings: The Coming US Digital Dollar (Part 1) — What it is, and Why it Matters
The Coming US Digital Dollar (Part 1) — What it is, and Why it Matters
A new US digital dollar, seemingly imminent, will transform the financial world and digital currency landscape
How the US digital dollar suddenly reversed course from uncertain, distant dream to high priority
What is a US digital dollar, and why is there so much confusion around central bank digital currency?
Understanding digital currencies like the US digital dollar is basically impossible without first understanding where money comes from
The hidden but significant differences between commercial bank money and central bank money
The many benefits of a US digital dollar can no longer be sidestepped
Footnotes:

Content: A non-exhaustive list of reasons cited for bitcoin’s success and growth includes: predictable coin supply schedule and capped total supply (21 million total coins), making it a scarce investment asset
relatively decentralized architecture, trust minimization, and status as a bearer instrument (seizureship resistance)
technical resiliency (uptime)
censorship resistance and privacy
efficient, relatively low cost, and otherwise useful for certain types of payments
price appreciation (“number go up”)
Which of bitcoin’s features will make their way into the final US digital dollar design is a subject of significant debate and something we will cover more in Part 2 of this series. What can be confidently forecasted is that most bitcoin design characteristics are highly unlikely to be copy/pasted into a US digital dollar. For example, some feel strongly that a US digital dollar should be similar to bitcoin in one very important way — as a bearer instrument — but there is also significant resistance to this characteristic. ( The US digital dollar serving as a bearer instrument is a concept we return to in a later section below)
Overall, limited technical feature overlap and other factors (eg US dollar’s status as legal tender) make it unclear how much direct competition would exist between a US digital dollar and bitcoin. While it is no longer credible to completely dismiss bitcoin’s extraordinary success, the vast majority of people still (quite understandably) do not yet use bitcoin, and this is due at least in part because they find cryptocurrency to be confusing. Indeed, the way bitcoin is primarily used today — less as a currency for payments and more as a scarce, “hard” asset that is frequently compared to gold — has led some including former-Bank of England Governor Mark Carney to state that bitcoin is misleadingly labeled when referred to as a currency. Instead of being called “cryptocurrency”, Carney and others believe a more accurate classification label for bitcoin is “cryptoasset”. In addition to its inconsistent taxonomy, the confusion surrounding cryptocurrency is partly due to the complexity behind the many advanced technologies cryptocurrencies employ, such as cryptography, economic game theory, and distributed ledgers. New jargon (“blockchain technology”) and mumbled explanations probably don’t help either.