Cryptocurrency: Digital Dystopia 90% of World Plans CBDC's and Digital Fiat, War On Cash

[grarpamp]

Digital Dystopia Looms: 90% Of Nations Are Planning CBDCs

https://off-guardian.org/2022/05/06/report-90-of-nations-planning-central-bank-digital-currency/
https://www.bis.org/publ/bppdf/bispap125.pdf
https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fintech-notes/Issues/2022/02/07/Behind-the-Scenes-of-Central-Bank-Digital-Currency-512174
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-14/crypto-in-europe-china-nigeria-turn-to-cbdc-digital-cash-experiments
https://news.bitcoin.com/central-bank-of-brazil-confirms-it-will-run-pilot-test-for-cbdc-this-year/
https://news.bitcoin.com/namibian-central-bank-announces-plan-to-launch-cbdc/
https://www.bis.org/statistics/payment_stats/commentary2112.htm
https://www.forbes.com/sites/frankvangansbeke/2021/06/27/why-central-bank-digital-currencies-cbdc-now-and-what-they-could-they-mean-for-climate-change-22/
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ukraine-crisis-may-reshape-role-cbank-digital-currency-says-ex-boj-official-2022-03-16/
https://off-guardian.org/2022/01/02/this-year-in-the-new-normal/
https://off-guardian.org/2021/10/01/programmable-digital-currency-the-next-stage-of-the-new-normal/
https://off-guardian.org/2022/03/19/ukraine-crisis-accelerating-rise-of-central-bank-digital-currencies/
https://off-guardian.org/2022/02/15/canada-invokes-emergencies-act-to-seize-convoy-funding/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/06/21/bank-england-tells-ministers-intervene-digital-currency-programming/

A new report from the Bank of International Settlements estimates that
up to 90% of national central banks are at least in the planning
stages for launching a central bank digital currency (CBDC):

    Nine out of 10 central banks are exploring central bank digital
currencies (CBDCs), and more than half are now developing them or
running concrete experiments. In particular, work on retail CBDCs has
moved to more advanced stages

This echoes a March report from the IMF, which claimed over one
hundred nations are at least in the planning stages of releasing their
own CBDC.

You can read the entire IMF report here, or a summary published by
Bloomberg here.

It seems programs of government-issued digital money have been gaining
momentum all around the world since at least 2020, and apparently, now
they exist in over half the countries on the planet.

The newest of these – Brazil and Namibia – announced their plans only
last month.

As with all globalist agendas, the push for CBDCs is always part of
“the current thing”.

First, it was a response to Covid. Then they could help us halt
climate change. Then they’re a response to the war in Ukraine.

Using that method they have moved from a barely-discussed fringe idea
to regular mainstream coverage and 90% of the world trying them out,
all within the space of a couple of years (as we predicted they would
in our New Years post)

Interestingly, while CBDCs are being talked about more and more, there
is one specific feature of them which is being talked about less and
less: Programmability.

Regular readers will be more than familiar with this concept – we
discussed it in detail in our previous articles on CBDCS (here and
here).

For those new readers: programmability is a hypothetical feature of
digital currency which would allow the issuer to set limits and
controls over its use.

Essentially, any CBDC would give either the state, the central bank or
the corporation issuing the money as wages the power to control how
and where the money is spent.

Any CBDC amounts to potential third-party control of your money.

It’s that simple.

This has massive implications for the very idea of individual liberty.
Given how the last two years have gone, it’s not at all hard to
imagine how such a system could be abused.

Halting payments to “protect the NHS”, garnishing wages to “fight
climate change” or individual financial sanctions because you aren’t
vaccinated.

One need look no further back than the Canadian truckers’ protest to
see a state financially unpersoning those who express dissent. A CBDC
would make that process both easier for the state to enforce and
harder for an individual to avoid.

It is, quite obviously, the biggest ethical and societal issue in any
potential system of digital currency.

And yet, neither the BIS report nor the IMF report nor Bloomberg’s
summary discusses the idea of “programmability” in any detail at all.
The word is used precisely once across all three documents, and they
never explain what it actually means

OffG has covered CBDCs in detail before, and the press has never been
shy in talking up the “benefits” of such strictly controlled money in
the past. On the contrary, it has always been treated as a major
selling point.

Agustin Carstens, the head of the Bank of International Settlements
discussed the idea in detail in a video in the summer of 2021:

    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.”

A Telegraph article from June 2021 again raved about the possible
benefits of programmable currency:

    Digital cash could be programmed to ensure it is only spent on
essentials, or goods which an employer or Government deems to be
sensible […] There could be some socially beneficial outcomes from
that, preventing activity which is seen to be socially harmful in some
way.

They were never reluctant to talk up programmability before, so it’s
noteworthy they should suddenly shut down that avenue of discussion.

Perhaps a sign they over-estimated what people would accept, and are
already experiencing more pushback on the idea than they expected.

That’s a comforting thought.

But don’t be fooled: Just because they stop mentioning it, doesn’t
mean they’re letting it go. They just want you to forget about it.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the list of countries
trialling digital currencies includes Ukraine and Russia, the United
States and China, Britain and the EU.

Every team in the league.

Picking a side won’t save you.