I don't think there is any difference. When the Federal Reserve purchases securities in the markets, they do it by just "creating" money. I think they literally just type in a number into a computer and use those newly created funds.
You could do this in any centrally digitally managed currency too. You could probably do it with a blockchain currency too if you get enough people to agree to the change.
Of course, if you don't like this, there's always the gold standard.....
> You could probably do it with a blockchain currency too if you get enough people to agree to the change.
That's a huge difference. The fed can print money whenever they want, whereas with bitcoin they need to convince a supermajority of the miners and users, otherwise they end up with a forked chain like bitcoin cash/gold/sv.
You could do this in any centrally digitally managed currency too. You could probably do it with a blockchain currency too if you get enough people to agree to the change.
Of course, if you don't like this, there's always the gold standard.....