Whether the NSA is behind it I don't know, but I agree that it will help grease the skids to a one world digital currency.
After the tulip thread the other day, I got to thinking about the future of bitcoin. Is it a world changing new device, where once the rest of the world catches on early adopters will be able to cash in their coins for millions -- or tulips.
BTC is painfully slow, and uses a lot of energy to process (so the transaction fee must be high, high enough that it's just not worth it for many transactions). Therefore it's safe to expect a very limited number of transactions. About the only thing I could come up with where it might serve an actual purpose would be transferring (or the ability to transfer) large amounts across borders. With no/few other uses, where is the demand? When I buy up a bunch of BTC to move my dollars out of the country, who am I going to sell them to when I get there (where's the bigger fool)?
But then I thought about another instance of large, "rare" transactions -- international settlements. How much would the central banks like a technology to supplant the FRBNY? This seems like a potentially valid use of the blockchain.
Now, would the central banks buy BTC from the early adopters or start their own? IMO, banks are finicky about who they give away large sums of money to, and would prefer to have control of the money (process the transactions in-house, cutting out the miners).
Okay, so the central banks set up their own crypto to use amongst themselves. Will they make it available to the rest of us (again, with usage probably limited in scope by nature)? Yeah, once they find a way to skim off the transactions or create new gov't debt. Will most people prefer CBcoin over BTC due to the fact that it is about as guaranteed as anything can be to have value as money -- sure. Will companies like Visa find a way to short circuit the transaction cost/speed to make CBC convenient for day to day use, perhaps taking on some of the risk involved with not waiting for the crypto transaction to actually process in return for a transaction fee -- isn't that kind of what they do?
And there it is, a global currency (and the death of BTC -- but hopefully after anyone here who is trading has taken their massive profits).
Of course, my little thought experiment could be totally stupid, but your comment is pretty much what I came up with.