The Bank of International Settlement (BIS) released a lengthy update on CBDC progress. It is a safe, reassuring report to justify CBDC as a benign evolution of the monetary system. From the report we glean that all the wonders of the post Bretton Woods fiat system will soon evolve to a more efficient central bank controlled digital system.
Testing and innovation on CBDCs behind the scenes are rapidly progressing. The report states:
Globally, a full 90% of central banks recently surveyed are doing some form of work on wholesale or retail CBDCs. A number of wholesale CBDC pilots are under way, often involving several central banks in different jurisdictions. There are three live retail CBDCs and a full 28 pilots. This includes the large-scale pilot by the People’s Bank of China, which now counts 261 million users. Meanwhile, over 60 jurisdictions now have retail fast payment systems, with several more planned in the coming years – such as FedNow in 2023. The BIS Innovation Hub is developing mCBDC platforms in partnerships with member central banks. These are Project Jura (with the central banks of Switzerland and France), Project Dunbar (with Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and South Africa), and mBridge (with Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, China and the United Arab Emirates).
Almost half of the report details the deficiencies of the Bitcoin-created private crypto universe that is in the process of imploding. One can’t argue with the report’s evaluation of crypto’s problems in its current state. To any objective observer with a modicum of due diligence, it is apparent that crypto is rife with unregulated Ponzi schemes, scams, hacks, rug pulls, wash trades, and blatant criminal activity. The entire backbone of crypto rests on the ridiculously fraudulent foundation of unaudited Tether and its supposed reserves. A system built on fraud is not sustainable, and the inevitable wreckage comes as no surprise.
From the coming wreckage, the report makes clear that the digital future Satoshi unleashed now requires the warm, embracing trust and control of central authorities. Our beloved dollar devaluing, interest rate manipulating, GFC inducing, TBTF backstopping, QE liquidity flooding, transitory inflation, and we won’t see another economic crisis in our lifetime Federal Reserve is working diligently to move us into our centralized digital future.
The paper is long on wonders and short on details. The transition to CBDC technology is still getting worked out in beta mode. The report assures us that individual privacy in transactions is of utmost importance. Personal privacy is a big talking point. Over and over, the report assures us that privacy and control will be central components of CBDC. The report states:
Not least, the system must protect privacy as a fundamental right, and provide user control over financial data.
The challenge is to arrange matters so that they can truly emulate paper banknotes and preserve people’s transactional privacy.
The data architecture underlying both retail FPSs and CBDCs can give much greater user control over personal data, while preserving privacy and consumer welfare. Indeed, central banks have no commercial interest in personal data, and can thus credibly design systems in the public interest.
Fast, reliable and cheap transactions should promote efficiency and financial inclusion, while users’ rights to privacy and control over data must be upheld.
In the wake of the Covid “pandemic,” the idea that central authorities have no interest in personal data is preposterous. Privacy is being degraded at an alarming rate. The rise of AI and computing power enables increased security state control at the expense of individual liberty. State requirements for digital IDs, vaccine passes, health passports, forced lockdowns, mandated experimental injections, and social credit scores, combined with the rise in controlled information platform silos, censorship, doxxing, smart cities, NSA meta database, and ubiquitous surveillance in every aspect of life give scant comfort that CBDC privacy is little more than a bait and switch selling point. Augustin Carstens, General Manager of the BIS, lets the CBDC crypto kitty out of the bag. He tells you exactly what central control of CBDC has planned for us. Carsten states:
We tend to establish the equivalence with cash. There is a huge difference there. For example in cash, we don’t know for example who is using a $100 bill today, we don’t know who is using a $1000 peso bill today. A key defense with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that. Those two issues are extremely important and that makes a huge difference with respect to what cash is.
As I noted in Biden CBDC EO, there is an evolution from Satoshi’s attempted decentralized cryptographic bitcoin disruption of central bank fiat to the polar opposite actual achievement—CBDC financial control. CBDC is fiat on human growth hormone steroids. Satoshi’s Bitcoin fixed-supply flaw unleashed a fraudulent, speculative crypto infrastructure that is now imploding his disruptive vision in a debacle of crypto collapses. Arising from the technological shards of Satoshi’s vision, Carstens’ centralized totalitarian CBDC is nearing practical application.