by Ronan Manly, BullionStar:
There is an ominous development gaining momentum across the world’s financial systems which has the potential to undermine monetary and personal freedom, yet which remains largely under the radar for most of the world’s population.
This development is the globally coordinated plan to roll out retail central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Billed by central banks and governments as the future of money, promising benefits like payment efficiency and financial inclusion, CBDCs in reality pave the way for a dystopian future characterised by total surveillance and control, which stands in stark contrast to the principles of a free society.
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At the helm of pushing this CBDC agenda are two shadowy but powerful organisations, neither of which is publicly accountable in any way – i.e. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) known as the “the central banks’ central bank”, based in Basel, Switzerland, and the Atlantic Council, a US led, Atlantic alliance (NATO) ‘think tank’ based in Washington D.C. which is funded by a combination of government, corporate and foundation sponsors.
While the Atlantic Council pushes policy frameworks in favour of CBDCs and creates the pro-CBDC narratives, the BIS (through its ‘Innovation Hub’) coordinates with central banks in pushing the actual development and implementation of CBDCs. And in both cases, they have been very busy.
According to the 2023 BIS Survey on CBDCs in which 86 central banks participated, 94% of these central banks are exploring a CBDC.
400% Increase in Central Banks planning a CBDC
Furthermore, according to the Atlantic Council’s ‘GeoEconomics Center’, which maintains a CBDC tracker, 134 countries (which represent 98% of global GDP) are involved in, or exploring, the rollout of a central bank digital currency. Four years ago in 2020, there were only 35 countries in that same position, so you can see the huge increase in numbers of central banks involved with CDBCs over the 2020 – 2024 period.
Currently, 69 countries are in the advanced phase of readying their CBDC, a figure which covers CBDCs in the development, pilot, or launch stages. Another 44 countries / central banks are in the research stage.
Previous coverage by BullionStar in 2021 explained what CBDCs are, how they are designed and structured, and how they will facilitate surveillance and control. The links to that previous coverage are an article from September 2021 titled “How CBDCs Will Enable Surveillance & Control”, and a video from October 2021 titled “What is the Difference Between Cryptocurrencies and CBDCs?”
If you look at the above, you will see that there are 2 types of CBDC, a wholesale CBDC for use by banks and financial institutions for wholesale market transactions and things like interbank payments, and a ‘general purpose’ or retail CBDC for use by the general public that will take the form of account-based CBDCs or ‘digital cash’ tokens. It is these retail account-based CBDCs, to be issued directly by central banks, which will be programmable, and tied to user identities using Digital IDs.
The Dangers of CBDCs
From BullionStar’s previous coverage, you will also be able to see why retail CBDCs are dangerous, so we won’t go over old ground here. Suffice to say, CBDCs are dangerous digital chains for humanity because:
• With CBDCs, transactions are not anonymous, so you have no privacy. Governments and central banks can monitor every transaction and who makes it. This allows total surveillance and erases financial privacy.
• CBDCs are programmable. This allows governments and their central banks to control what goods and services a digital token can buy, to apply expiration dates on balances, and most importantly to exclude or block individuals who might criticise government policies (i.e. think Chinese type social credit score). These are all forms of social and economic manipulation and indeed economic coercion.
• For retail CBDCs to be used, they in practice require each citizen to have a Digital ID, with the CBDC account and balances linked to a digital ID. A global rollout of CBDCs will therefore a) force everyone to have a Digital ID, which b) will create a full surveillance network that tracks everyone and their financial transactions.
• Since CBDCs are issued directly by central banks, they also centralise financial power in the State and its central bank. This is highly dangerous and is the antithesis to the concepts of freedom represented by gold and silver, and the concept of decentralisation represented by private cryptocurrencies.
In summary, CBDCSs are anemia to free societies because they undermine freedom, privacy, and individual liberty and autonomy.
Just look at what the larger than life general manager of the BIS, Agustín Carstens, said about CBDCs in 2021:
Now we have this pompous authoritarian, Agustín Carstens, head of the @BIS_org.
CBDC is NOT digital cash.
“Central banks will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use…& we will have the technology to enforce that.” https://t.co/TWEyPX8pHj pic.twitter.com/4OUMWsLS3R
— Rudy Havenstein, Senior Markets Commentator. (@RudyHavenstein) July 15, 2021
In the above clip, which was taken from a panel discussion on CBDCs organised by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in October 2020, and moderated by the IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva (a panel which included US Fed chairman Jerome Powell), the BIS general manager Agustín Carstens admitted that the whole reason for CBDCs is control:
“Our analysis for CBDCs in particular for the general use, we tend to establish the equivalence with cash, but there is a huge difference there. For example, in cash, we don’t know whose using a $100 bill today, we don’t know who is using the 1000 Peso bill today.
The KEY difference with the CBDC is that CENTRAL BANKS will have ABSOLUTE CONTROL on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of a CBDC [by the consumer] and also will have the technology to ENFORCE IT. Those two issues are extremely important and that makes a huge difference with respect to what cash is.”
All Major Central Banks planning a CBDC
Literally pick any central bank and country at random, and you will find that it is currently working on developing a CBDC. This ranges from the central banks of the Western industrialised Group of Seven (G7) nations of the US, UK, as well as Germany, France, Italy (as part of the ECB), and Canada and Japan, to the central banks of the large emerging markets of fellow Group of Twenty (G20) members China, Russia, India, South Africa and Brazil (all BRICS founders) as well as other G20 countries i.e. Argentina, Mexico, South Korea, Turkey, Australia, and Saudi Arabia, and the European Central Bank (ECB).
