The early employees will get millions of dollars. This is 1)an unreasonably large amount of money for anybody to make or 2)nothing compared to the billions that the founders and venture investors will make.
Finnovation SF is a conference Sila is organizing on Oct 14 in SF. We are delivering on our promise of "From Founders to Founders" with an amazing group of speakers :
- Adam Erlebacher | CEO, Fabric
- Nadim Homsany | President, EarnUp
- Laura Spiekerman | CRO, Alloy
- Alan Lewis | CIO, DiversyFund
- Matt Harris | CEO, Bloom Credit
- Brian Hamilton | COO, SafeCorp
- Tory Reiss | Cofounder, TrustToken
- Cameron Morris | CTO, Fabrica
- Emily Cangie | Business Development, Create33
- Antoinette O’Gorman | CCO, PolySign
- Matthew Van Buskirk | CEO, Hummingbird Financial
True. But its not programmable, in the way that Ethereum is for example. And that would be a nice feature to have in a payments system. PoW would never make sense for the Fed anyway - more likely PoS with some combination of Member Feds and participating FIs doing the staking and validating would make more sense.
The Federal Reserve isn't a single entity. Its composed of 12 different member Federal Reserve Banks. And The banks that are part of the Federal Reserve system own stock in the member Feds and have significant representation on it. Also blockchains are great if you care about transparency, immutability, and accessibility.
It could very easily do that. Try writing a check for a million dollars - the bank won't pay it, and the same if you try using your debit card for very large amounts. Visa/Mastercard/others request authorization from the banks before they authorize payment. The banks choose not to link the authorization directly to the customers balance, thus allowing them to spend more money than they have while paying the bank a $34 fee for $4 coffee.
Banks can make money in other ways - in many parts of Europe banks don't charge overdraft fees - they just charge you a monthly fee to cover the cost of providing service. Other banks (e.g., ING Direct, Uno-e) in those same countries provide accounts without fees, and without access to a branch network. You can choose what service level you want without being screwed over by the bank.
And even before 1973, the gold in the Fed's vaults did not back all the currency in circulation, only a fraction of ith (thats why it was called the fractional reserve system).
Also, banks cannot actually create money. Before a bank can lend money to a customer, it has to receive money from another customer. During any given business day they may end up lending more money than they received (or vice versa), but at the end of the day they just borrow it in the overnight Fed Funds market (or lend the excess). The only agency that actually creates money (electronically or physically) in the US is the Federal Reserve. They typically do this by creating money electronically, and then buying bonds, so that the money enters circulation.
Actually, there is a system in place for any bank to transfer money to another account at another bank. Its called ACH (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_Clearing_House), and thats how direct debit and most other interbank transfers in the US work. Internationally there is SWIFT and wire transfers, but within the US all that you really need is a name, account number, and bank routing number. All of this information is printed on a personalized check from any bank; thats why some people ask for a void check to setup auto-pay.
That said banks in the US have been very very slow to make this technology easy for customer's to use, partially because they just suck at user friendly technology, and partly because they don't want to make it too easy for people to move their money to an account at another bank.
Actually, you don't have to be related to the armed forces in any way to join USAA bank. I am not even a US citizen, and I was able to sign-up without trouble. All you have to do is answer no to all the questions about the armed forces, and it will still allow you to open an account.