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Currencies: Repeal of the US Federal Reserve's monopoly on currency in the USA. Since the...

...Federal Reserve came into existence in 1913, it has devalued the US dollar by 95.73%. In other words, saying the same item could have been bought both in 1913 and today, what a US dollar can buy today, you could have bought with four pennies in 1913. How the Federal Reserve has devalued the US dollar is simply by printing more of it. The more it prints, the more the dollar is devalued. This challenge doesn’t eliminate the Federal Reserve but simply gives its currency some much needed competition. This challenge’s goal is to stabilize the value of currencies in the US by enabling private US banks to issue their own currencies. All private US-bank-issued currencies must be gold and/or silver based. This doesn't mean they have to be actual gold and/or silver coins but that they must at least be backed with gold and/or silver, which means you can take their currency into one of their banks and get it redeemed with the appropriate precious metal that their note says it is backed with.

And then there are electronic currencies like BitCoin and Ripple. It is still too early to tell if digital cash can effectively be used by the public as an alternative currency, but so far it looks promising. By repealing the US Federal Reserve's monopoly on printing money, this will accelerate digital cash replacing them AND bank-backed gold/silver-based currencies. Doing so will remove currencies from government control and thus greatly reduce any government's control of their nation's economy. The immediate challenge for any digital cash is to show it cannot be devalued like how the US currency has been by the US Federal Reserve. As it exists as only digital data, easy manipulation (anonymously buying a lot of the digital currency and then dumping it all at once on the market) is a real potential problem and thus this is the core devaluation challenge for any digital cash. [Expect governments to try to do exactly this. If they can show that digital cash can be destabilized, they will kill it as a real form of currency.] However, if any digital cash can be proven to be manipulation-proof, the public's adoption of it will accelerate. If any digital cash can INCREASE in value the longer you hold onto it, the public will flock to it as an investment tool. But, again, it is too early to tell if BitCoin, Ripple, or any other digital cash can do any of this. Time will tell.

Future Challenges: First US bank to issue its own:

1) Private currency.

2) Private currency that has a coin or paper money with the face of Adam Smith on it.

3) Private currency that has a coin or paper money with the face of Milton Friedman on it.

4) Private currency that has a gold coin with the face of Ayn Rand on it.

Paying its government employees with only a private bank's currency (which will VERY likely be a bank headquartered in their jurisdiction), first:

5) US city.

6) US state.

The first of the following that refuses to accept Federal Notes for payment:

7) Fast food restaurant chain with at least one restaurant unit in each US state. [Just as businesses can refuse to accept payment from a certain credit card (such as Discover) or with a foreign currency, they should also be able to refuse to accept one or more US currency where there are competing currencies. If a business cannot refuse to accept a currency (even if that is the federal government’s Federal Notes, “US dollars”), true competition amongst currencies is undermined by forcing businesses to accept what they might not consider to be a stable currency. This action (even the mere possible threat) by businesses will also help force the US Federal Reserve and currency-issuing banks to vigilantly guard the integrity and value of their currency.]

8) Retail chain with at least one store in each US state.

9) Gas station and/or convenience store chain with at least one station/store in each US state.

10) US airline.

11) US cellphone company.

12) US city.

13) US state.

First US bank to:

14) Increase the value of their paper currency. [This would result in deflation. You being able to buy more with less money. This type of deflation isn't your stuff becoming worth less but the currency becoming worth more. This is great for people who save and sort of bad for people who borrow. It is "sort of bad" for borrowers in that loans don't devalue as they do under inflation, but it is good for borrowers in that it is another incentive for them to repay their loans as quickly as possible.

How a bank could do this is by increasing its precious metal reserves and then allowing its "old" currency to be redeemed for more of the precious metal than what is listed on that "old" bank note. By the US bank doing this, merely holding that bank's currency would be viewed as a type of investment. Once one US bank were to do this, other US banks would be forced to follow suit or risk all their currency users dumping their currency for the ever-increasing-in-value currency.]

15) Increase the value of its paper currency 23.40 times (2,340%). [This would then make their "dollar" worth the same as a 1913 US dollar. At least symbolically, the bank would be repairing the damage done by the Federal Reserve to US currency. That and the penny would again actually become something of real value.]

Discussion:
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