WA Post on Fedcoin

Cash has the distinct advantage of being anonymous. You can put cash under your mattress or in a vault, and no one knows about it except you. A national cryptocurrency would make it far more difficult for criminals to hoard money because all transactions would be recorded in the government ledger. 

No.   once we have a digital representation of the currency, we can treat it like cash.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are based on a complicated technology known as blockchain, which acts like a digital ledger of all transactions completed with the currency. It’s somewhat similar to the serial number that you can find on every dollar bill, but it actually means something because it makes bitcoin nearly impossible to counterfeit.

Let us be more specific.  As long as my counterparty is willing to wait two  minutes or two days for the bitcoin to clear the blockchain, then, yes, here is no double spending. But we are not waiting, we will take the Fecoin inside he ringed fence and skipo the call to blockchain, just exchangethe digits without a third party.

 With a national cryptocurrency, whose supply is controlled by the central bank, rates can be negative.

Complete horeshit.   There is certaintly a finite probability of a negative 'usage' charge, and in FX trading one side always suffers the flow.  But, otherwise, the interest charge are always determined by the collective match between loans and deposits, under the published bounds on market making risk the bank is willing to take.  There is no setting of rates, I don't care how many beards and suits you have on the committees, the trading pits are automated.

Worried about deflation in a recession? No longer. A national cryptocurrency such as fedcoin would be able to operationalize Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter cash” as an alternative strategy to stimulate the economy.

Milt and Ben are not the brightest bulbs on the subject.  'Helicopter droppings', are mathematically, the currency risk, the probability of losses and gains by the currency market maker (the pit bosses that sort the queues and matches the sequences).

Th author of the WA Post article is a bit behind the scene.  Central bankers have already been caught with the 'fake cash' idea of a three party transaction, like bitcoin or swift). So, from now on he pundits have to remember, two party exchange uses watermarked digits and counterfeit proof no double spending rule. Three party is a phone call to janet or the miners, whenever you make a purchase.  No central banker wants to be embarrassed again by me when they make the boo boo.