Posted on 10/10/2021 4:12:00 PM PDT by American Number 181269513
In a barbed tweet yesterday, NSA consultant turned whistleblower Edward Snowden said that Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) could “casually [annihilate] the savings of every wage-worker” in the country.
Snowden began his attack against the nascent promise of CBDCs—digital currencies backed by the monetary reserves of a central bank—in response to an article by New York Times guest columnist Dr. Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policies at Cornell University.
Dr. Prasad highlighted the growing move towards a cashless economy, a move signaled by the research and trials of CBDCs in countries such as China, Sweden, Japan, Britain, as well as the European Central Bank, which this summer warned countries that the tech sector may soon outpace governments if they don’t start preparing their own digital currencies.
Snowden highlighted a portion of Dr. Prasad’s article where the academic theorized that if the American economy was in dire straits, and the Federal Reserve had already shrunk the interest rate it controlled to zero, “the Fed could [then] impose a negative interest rate by gradually shrinking the electronic balances in everyone’s digital currency accounts.”
It’s worth noting that when inflation is too low, negative interest rates can encourage borrowing and spending to encourage interest rates to climb back up. Since holding physical cash is itself expensive—there’s secure storage space to consider—a bank is more likely to either lend money to other banks or pay the negative interest rate.
While that might work for commercial banks, Snowden sees Prasad’s piece as ominous for regular savers under a new regime of CBDCs, arguing that the currencies would be “a ‘useful policy tool’ for casually annihilating the savings of every wage-worker in the country if they don’t spend them fast enough.”
What is a Central Bank Digital Currency, you ask? Oh, you know: just a "useful policy tool" for casually annihilating the savings of every wage-worker in the country if they don't spend them fast enough. https://t.co/TAKQCEDcOX
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 9, 2021
Snowden elaborated on his CBDC fears in a blog post published a few hours later. He called CBDCs “a perversion [...] of the founding principles and protocols of cryptocurrency—a cryptofascist currency, an evil twin entered into the ledgers on Opposite Day, expressly designed to deny its users the basic ownership of their money and to install the State at the mediating center of every transaction.”
Snowden started with a condensed history of money—from its humble origins as scarce pieces of precious metal mined from the earth’s bowels, tracing it to its current incarnation, often as digital figures on a banking app.
He then explained the promise of decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which offer a method of storing and trading money free from intermediaries, like banks and financial services, before suggesting that CBDCs threaten the very principles of crypto by radically re-centralizing the monetary system so that every digital penny is once more controlled by a central bank.
Some algorithmic stablecoins do just what Snowden fears—remove coins from people’s wallets to alter the total supply and the value of the coins. The difference is that these mechanisms, known as rebases, occur autonomously according to parameters set by the community, not by the central banks that Snowden distrusts.
Snowden isn’t alone in his cynicism toward CBDCs. In August, a survey of 2,500 British adults conducted by POLITICO concluded that only 24% of British adults surveyed believe that CBDCs would be a net positive for society, with 30% believing it would do more harm than good. Around three-quarters of respondents were concerned that cyberattacks would undermine a CBDC issued by the Bank of England.
The growing buzz around CBDCs shows no signs of abating, but people are clearly worried about their money being attacked, by cybercriminals or, in the case of Edward Snowden and Dr. Prasad, by their own government’s central bank.
I think the current plan of the IRS monitoring all bank accounts and transactions above $600 (it really is all transactions) is laying the groundwork for this type of future plan.
They can control as many cryptos as they want just to make it look better, and they will.
NSA consultant BRENNAN'S CIA INFILTRANT turned whistleblower traitor who gave national security secrets to America's enemies, Edward Snowden
Lead is a good investment.
bkmk
The funniest part of this is like all these “economic whizzes” act like they never had even a basic course in economics.
It reminds me of G.H.W. Bush’s visit to a real grocery store, where he had never seen a laser bar code scanner, because his staff and employees did stuff like that for him. A complete disconnect with reality. Yet he imagined that he knew better with stupidly unrealistic international economic schemes.
These academic and government bozos have been playing fantasy games with fiat currencies for so long they think they are real. Because they say so.
Derivatives are one such fantasy game. Playing with monopoly money in amounts many times greater than all the wealth in the world.
Eventually they proclaim: “I have 100 times more money than Bill Gates, so I own everything! Sell me everything!”
And everybody else just says “no”.
And instantly his $300 Trillion becomes worthless.
Ya, ok Karen.
And yet still more likeable than any govt hack.
It’s more likely it’s laying the groundwork to catch you buying the illegal cryptos. Try to buy some PirateChain (arrr) coin or some Monero to keep it hidden from taxes as you buy stuff or send it to loved ones and as soon as they put it in a bank...wammo they got ‘em.
NSA has been spying on Americans for decades—blowing the whistle on that is patriotism in my book.
Biden's nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova, has already laid out her plan for Central Bank Digital Currency - CBDC in her recent manifesto:
The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy
Excerpts:
Beginning with the liability side of the central bank balance sheet, this Article advocates the issuance of general-purpose CBDC (the “digital dollar”) and concurrent migration of all transaction deposit accounts from private banks to the Federal Reserve. Focusing on the ultimate “end-state” whereby central bank accounts fully replace—rather than uneasily co-exist with—private bank deposits, the Article explores the full range of new monetary policy options the proposed structural shift would enable.In effect, it re-imagines the role of a central bank as the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy—the People’s Ledger....
Doing so is especially urgent in light of the ongoing digitization of finance, which includes rapid proliferation of privately-issued digital money and privately-run digital payments systems. Notwithstanding their rhetoric of democratization, these technologies threaten to undermine the fundamental balance of the sovereign public’s and private actors’ relative powers and roles in the financial system
Biden selected her because she has a plan, and he (or those pulling his strings) likes it.
Bitcoin is hard on my teeth.
Don’t you have to have cash to buy crypto????
Biden s the Manchurian Candidate in a nutshell. He’s just the puppet of larger global forces.
nailed it
Not necessarily. If you wanted to sell me your car, you could simply create a crypto wallet, tell me your public key and then I transfer bitcoin to your wallet. The ledger is totally open for the whole world to see, but the owner of the wallet is anonymous.
Agreed. Reading comments here I have to laugh that noone was the least bit alarmed at Trump executive order to digitalize the banking system.
I am clueless....thanks.
It’s bad enough with the government demanding its cut of every penny of interest you make. With CBDC, their snout would be permanently affixed to your bank account.
James Clapper flat out lied about the NSA spying on Americans. Snowden exposed that lie.
I want our spy agencies working for the American people, not viewing the American people as the enemy. Like so much of the government, the spy agencies have been corrupted and coopted.
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