Cash will be no refuge under CBDCs

submitted by stickdog from (bombthrower.com)

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[–]kingsmegLiberté, égalité, fraternité 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Almost none of these articles talk about the fact that the people who still use cash do so, for the most part, because they have no choice. Because they are unbanked. Because they do not have access to the banking system for any number of reasons that are only set to increase (see Freedom Convoy).

So trying to remove cash from the system does not poof these people out of existence, nor do most of them have the ability to switch to Bitcoin or start hoarding gold like they're a dragon or whatever. What this will do is force them to adopt different trade mechanisms. Here in Canada, people can pretty seamlessly switch to trading with US dollars if Canada decides they're not printing any more. And if they all crack down on cash, they will cause a huge crime wave as these people figure out how to steal what they need to survive.

[–]stickdog[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Excerpt:

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The Good News

While it’s practically baked-in that CBDCs will either launch as, or morph into, CCP-style social credit systems, what is unknown at the moment is if Late Stage Globalism’s financial system will actually hold together long enough for retail CBDCs to deploy.

We see a lot of tweets and Youtube videos from people predicting a snap launch of a CBDC after a sudden banking holiday in the imminent future.

I don’t see that as possible, because there isn’t a major economy in the world that is anywhere close to being ready to launch a retail CBDC.

There are numerous interbank clearing networks that are either in test beds or already up and running. FedNow’s launch over the summer is one, and many say that is a precursor to the CBDC launch.

But at the retail level: on your phone, monitoring every transaction, metering your carbon footprint – this is still a long way off.

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The US, the IMF, the BIS et al are still writing white papers about it. Many of them are chilling, to be sure, but they’re still navel gazing and not actually working on it. The UK just announced their retail CBDC roadmap and the research phase alone will start this year and go on for the next three years.

In Canada there are some tests going on but even the Bank of Canada admits there isn’t a compelling use case for CBDCs and not many Canadians really want it.

Of the four retail CBDCs already up and running (The Bahamas, Jamaica, The Eastern Caribbean Dollar, and Nigeria), they have all been plagued with technical problems or public apathy. Venezuela has launched two CBDCs over the past decade, each launch coinciding with a massive currency devaluation, and they both stiffed.

But it’s Nigeria’s eNaira which is the closest to a heavy-handed government forced CBDC. Although there is no social credit component yet -authorities there were pressing hard for a full-on cash ban to get people to use it, and that’s gone quite badly. Nigerians are opting for gold and Bitcoin instead (hold that thought).

The global financial system is coming unglued so fast that governments may find themselves forced to accelerate retail CBDC projects.

My prediction has always been that in a crisis they’ll resort to some half-baked abomination that rolls out atop a base layer that already exists: like Ethereum (which we’re already seeing in Brazil) or Ripple – who seems to want to be the base layer for CBDCs.

Once CBDC’s hit, we will wind up in a type of Monetary Apartheid, and the important thing to understand is that clinging to cash isn’t going to save you.

Fortunately, no matter which path toward retail CBDCs governments choose, it will take long enough that you still have time to prepare.

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