[syntheweave]

CBDC removes the overheads of banking as it exists, which always had a foundational premise of limited ability to govern and coordinate directly at large scale. Private banks have all kinds of specific responsibilities and requirements to move and store money, and they extract fees from that.

The basic logic(from the perspective of the government) is that this is a further centralizing of economic power, and therefore adds efficiencies of scale.

The downside of that is basically that it closes off any remaining illusions of privacy from the state in one's financial matters. The banks were already cooperating in the existing framework, this just makes it easier. And really, I think I'm OK with this as a clarifying step. In the bad old days you were basically relying on a system that would get things wrong with no recourse: sometimes banks failed and you lost your deposit. If you actually wanted to maintain economic privacy under that system you were at the mercy of the bureaucracy, and if you wanted specifically to evade the law and taxation you would have to set up a semblance of alibi(thus laundering etc.)

The whole sphere of crypto/privacy coins doesn't really enter into this in any direct way, since the premise of those is to suggest economic ideas outside of the model of the nation state, which is actually different from a "for or against" position as is often imagined: it's just a different kind of economic technology for account and settlement, one that prioritizes keeping a consensus secure over installing a speedy arbiter.

[landemva]

Crypto is relevant because a transaction can not be censored, nor my coins arbitrarily seized.