Enter "Central Bank Digital Currencies": the mainstream answer to bitcoin.
For those who have never heard of them, "Central Bank Digital Currencies" (CBDCs) are exactly what they sound like, digitized versions of the pound/dollar/euro etc. issued by central banks.
Like bitcoin (and other crypto), the CBDC would be entirely digital, thus furthering the ongoing war on cash. However, unlike crypto, it would not have any encryption preserving anonymity. In fact, it would be totally the reverse, potentially ending the very idea of financial privacy.
Now, you may not have heard much about the CBDC plans, lost as they are in the tangle of the ongoing "pandemic", but the campaign is there, chugging along on the back pages for months now. There are stories about it from both Reuters and the Financial Times just today.
The countries where the idea progressed the furthest are China and the UK. The Chinese Digital Yuan has been in development since 2014, and is subject to ongoing and widespread testing. The UK is nowhere near that stage yet, but Chancellor Rishi Sunak is keenly pushing forward a digital pound that the press are calling "Britcoin".
Other countries, including New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Malaysia, are not far behind.
The US is also researching the idea, with Jerome Powell, head of Federal Reserve, announcing the release of a detailed report on the "digital dollar" in the near future.
The proposals for how these CBDCs might work should be enough to raise red flags in even the most trusting of minds.
Most people wouldn't like the idea of the government monitoring "all spending in real-time", but that's not the worst of it.
By far the most dangerous idea is that any future digital currency should be "programmable". Meaning the people issuing the money would have the power to control how it is spent.
That's not an interpretation or a "conspiracy theory", here is a quote from Agustin Carstens, head of the Bank for International Settlements, speaking earlier this year:
The key difference [with a CBDC] is that the central bank would have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and then have the technology to enforce that."
Which tells you not only that they want and are seeking this power, but how they justify it to themselves. They transform other people's money into an "expression of their liability", and so consider it's only right that they control it.
An article in the Telegraph, back in June, was just as candid: READ MORE
