[janandonly]

We already have a digital Euro/Dollar/Yen, just look at the banking app on your phone or the transactions you do with a bank or credit card.

But I'm very scared to see what those digital wallets for CBDC will turn into. If central banks get control over money flows they can do horrible stuff:

* set a maximum limit on the amount of money you are allowed to have/save in your CBDC wallet.

* give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it (by taking the excess away at the end of the month or topping it up to a limit). This will erode all incentive to save. If forces consumption instead of preservation.

* work with a whitelist of acceptable ways to spent the money. You want to sent some money to someone who is not a legal resident/lives abroad/is on a black list for xyz reason? Though luck...

* set a "transaction" price / hidden tax on less trustworthy or less "wanted" persons or company's. Like when you want to buy liquor/a gun/give to a church you pay 5% transaction costs, but when you pay your rent the transaction costs are 0%.

* in a very real sense untraceable money is privacy and making money traceable is taking privacy away. We may not have something to hide but there is nothing I want them to see either...

  Revelation 13:16,17 says "It puts under compulsion all people—the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free and the slaves—that these should be marked, and that nobody can buy or sell except a person having the mark"

[bboygravity]

I would argue that all of that is already more or less the case with the central banking system as we have it now: negative interest rates, money only insured up to 100k per person in EU bank accounts, massive decrease in buying power (look at the price of real estate/gold/crypto expressed in EUR/USD over the past 10 years), Dutch citizens pay "capital tax" over any capital over some 30k EUR (literally: spend it or we tax you).

About the whitelists? Already the case. My bank account in Portugal just got frozen 2 days ago for trying to buy crypto through Coinbase (we're talking about less than 100 EUR transaction here). This involved transferring money to an Estonian account, which according to support is "a blacklisted country" (even though it's an EU member state and an attractive European country for tech related businesses). I tried transferring money from my other EU fintech bank accounts which worked perfectly fine and almost instantly (so the blacklist excuse is bs). I still can't access my funds in that account 2 days later. Computer says no. Support can't help. I'm strongly suspecting this has nothing to do with Estonia and everything to do with banks not liking crypto.

So for everybody who wonders what problems crypto currencies are solving? Well, there ya go...

[jsmcgd]

The difference, is that the CBDC will be even more centralized. To control currency flows requires the participation of many separate entities. With this new 'digital money' it requires only the participation of those who control the blockchain. ie political policy can be achieved programmatically, by having complete control over all currency transactions in a nation. This is very different from the status quo. It should be noted that cash will soon be eliminated.

The potential for abuse here is enormous. If you think shadow banning is problematic from a free speech perspective. Imagine being silently shadow banned from your local grocery store. Imagine not being able to donate to a particular cause/political party. Imagine not being able to give a friend in need financial support because their social score is too low.

People have no actual freedom without economic freedom, and this system will create a sword of Damocles that will hang over each and every person.

[toomuchtodo]

> People have no actual freedom without economic freedom, and this system will create a sword of Damocles that will hang over each and every person.

You cannot use technology to fix a people (in this case, political) problem. Codify your rights in statute and executive governance authority. Using a distributed ledger ain't gonna fix your laws and courts.

[dajohnson89]

to be fair, crypto purchases have a high incidence of chargeback fraud. this is expensive for banks.

edit: i chuckled at the little britain reference :)

[bboygravity]

The risk of charge backs for banks is not really a good argument, charge backs for SEPA (eurozone) transfers initiated by the account holder himself are not a thing that exist as far as I know. You can't reverse a small erroneous transfer if you initiated it as the account holder (in contrast with credit card payments in the US for example).

Furthermore, I'm not exactly the first person to buy crypto through the largest crypto exchange in the world (Coinbase) with such a Portuguese bank account. They know this Coinbase bank account, they know what it's for (buying crypto) and they know it's not a scam.

[adambyrtek]

They could easily decline a single card payment instead of suspending the whole account.

[therein]

Attach those digital wallets to biometrics and just like that, we have the nightmare to which you are alluding.

Going against the zeigeist again but if something gets pushed onto us for something silly like "pandemic preparedness" or "contact & trace" like 9/11 has brought onto us...that offers identity management that can be expanded into a system like this...

If that happens, can we please stop pretending like something about biology and infectious diseases has fundamentally changed because of COVID for a second and get back to our senses...

We as a global society are clearly prone to collective hysteria whether we have been brought here by a series of unfortunate events and coincidences or by malice pushing their agenda.

Science loves being proven wrong, science loves getting to the bottom of things. There is nothing wrong with worshiping science but scientist worship is a part of it. We are all humans with our egos, trouble admitting being wrong, or simply personal gain from acting a certain way. Many of us just go with things to fit in, or have a career or just to make ends meet.

Numbers can be fudged. Everyone should have the stance of "show me" before believing. And you can't just take what media shows you at the face value. Reenactments, B-roll footage, the whole thing is a lot less "real" than we are lead to believe.

It is not a pandemic if you need to be told it is a pandemic.

You are losing your rights and freedoms because people are scared.

If you were alive during 9/11, doesn't this feel eerily familiar?

Doesn't it feel exactly like it feels when the second plane hit on 9/11?

Scare me and take my rights and freedom.

Can't you see people have the same emotional reaction when you try to get people to question the official COVID narrative that you see when you try to get them to think outside the official 9/11 narrative?

We are a lot less free now than we were before 9/11. And we are not any safer.

The same is about to happen if not happening right now.

We are all being played. Open your eyes and question even the sources you trusted for years. Just because your views aligned with a source for years doesn't mean they are on your side. They can be fooled too. This isn't about intention. We are all human. We are all fallible and this is about to get worse unless we all open our eyes and stop repeating the narrative the media is feeding everyone.

[pcdoodle]

"It is not a pandemic if you need to be told it is a pandemic."

I'm using that, thanks.

[dannyw]

Thank you. Check out this recent AMA from a Professor of Medicine at Stanford University: https://www.reddit.com/r/LockdownSkepticism/comments/jcxsb1/...

[mschuster91]

> set a "transaction" price / hidden tax on less trustworthy or less "wanted" persons or company's. Like when you want to buy liquor/a gun/give to a church you pay 5% transaction costs, but when you pay your rent the transaction costs are 0%.

That is what happens already today, you just don't notice it as a consumer as the vendor pays the CC bill.

[mantap]

All of these could be circumvented though. For instance, you are given X and have to spend it by the end of the month. So you sell your X to someone who does want to spend money and they give you something in return (e.g. cryptocurrency) that you can save. Or you just buy some object such as gold jewellery that has a measurable value.

This kind of direct interference with money never works. People just find ways around it, and if they can't, then the money loses its value.

[gruez]

>So you sell your X to someone who does want to spend money and they give you something in return (e.g. cryptocurrency) that you can save. Or you just buy some object such as gold jewellery that has a measurable value.

presumably if they're going through that much effort to implement this, they'll prevent this from happening. eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

[tsjq]

>give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it (by taking the excess away at the end of the month or topping it up to a limit).

that could be an interesting one for Universal Basic Income .

[SailingSperm]

It's not, and doesn't work. Firstly, it'll just get turned into something else (by spending/buying with it) that holds value and is sought after/tradable/fungible - Eg. Alcohol, gold, drugs, x_equiptment. Plus, if the money deletes after say 30 days it's worth less on day 29 than day 1. If it doesn't disappear after the transaction, it'll just be funneled through business for the 2nd tier 'money' described prev.

[tim333]

They are unlikely I think to put more restrictions on central bank digital currency than they do on regular fiat currency. Though those are getting worse - I just got a demand from a brokers of proof of "sources of wealth' ie. where my money came from, which is the first time that has happened in 40 years of having banks accs & stocks. How many people have documentary proof of how they got money 35 years ago - in my case? And that's not because I'm dodgy - IB UK are doing it for all customers - coming to a financial institution serving you soon probably.

[fuoqi]

>give you an x amount of money and force you to spend it. This will erode all incentive to save. If forces consumption instead of preservation.

Arguably money should not be used for savings in the first place. Some problems of the modern monetary system arise from the fact that money conflate two functions: medium for trade and tool for savings. After doing something useful for economy and acquiring money for it, you have two options: either you buy someone else's work or you invest somewhere (effectively you lend your useful contribution to someone). The first option is a relatively short-lived, think of money as a reputation system, you are more likely to care about a favor done days ago, not decades ago. Another way of looking on it is that it is easier to compare merit of deeds which were done close in time. But the second option has all the risks and difficulties associated with investments.

If you are interested in this topic, I recommend works of Silvio Gesell, it's somewhat outdated, but still quite interesting even in modern times.