Centralized Digital Currency- worth the risk?
What’s not to love about the American dollar bill? It’s a tangible and portable store of wealth, recognized and accepted around the planet. It’s convenient to use and- when you’ve got some in your wallet- provides no-electricity-required, on the spot purchasing power. But the most important qualities of cash money are what we consider the least- and take for granted the most- how it protects our identity, our habits, and our preferences. As long we spend it legally and lawfully, shouldn’t we have the right to do so with privacy?
Goodbye, privacy
There will be no privacy under a Central Bank Digital Currency system. The Central Authority will collect and store data along every node of the digital ledger- each and every a token is spent. If it isn’t bad enough that social media sites and search engines are tracking and recording our online activities and habits, imagine the Central Bank maintaining a database of each and every CBDC transaction we make. But wait, it gets worse..
The path to absolute control
If Americans are no longer allowed to use cash for food, gas, housing, energy, and all other necessities for life, but must instead rely exclusively on a programable digital currency, the stage will be set for absolute control over the American public by the Central Banking Authority and whichever political party controls that authority at any given time. As Augustin Carstens of the Bank for International Settlements stated, the “Central Bank will have Absolute Control on the rules and regulations” that will govern the use of the CBDC. Citizen compliance with any government order or edict can be enforced by a line of code.
Whomever controls the Federal Government will have the means to regulate spending in a way that simply cannot exist in a paper-money economy. Forgot to pay your parking ticket on time? In a world of CBDC, the authorities can block your gas purchases until you’ve resolved the matter. Didn’t get your state-mandated COVID or flu “booster” by the deadline? Same thing: you might find your CBDC account has been frozen.
A new era of mandates, regulations. rations and quotas would be available to the government once they have the means for complete enforcement. The government might regulate how much meat we can purchase per week, or candy, or alcohol, or anything. And if any of us protest or speak out against policy, we might find our spending curtailed even further. Think this isn’t possible? Do you really want to take the chance? And if interest-bearing savings accounts still exist in such a world, the government will be able to manipulate interest rates to instantaneous effect. Negative interest rates could be declared as a use-it-or-lose-it mechanism to manipulate consumer spending. Any decision or decree by the State could in some way be enforced by CBDC rulemaking
Consider your own worst possible candidate winning control of the next presidential election in a CBDC-controlled economy.
Now imagine that same person writing the rules on how you spend your money.