CBDC not only plans to stop using physical cash but also has the ability to monitor what you are buying or paying for. Artificial intelligence, easily identifies your use of cash of what you buy and pay for but also your charitable contributions, political contributions, travel, etc.). All can be tracked and it is easy to create a profile. If this is not already bad enough and a severe attack on your freedom and privacy, CBDC can also be used to freeze your account among many other penalties or tax payments etc.
But it looks we experience another step and type of control. Just imagine, if banks already are able to close bank accounts of private individuals because they do not like what they think politically, then image what could happen when governments are in total control of bank accounts.
Nigel Farage is a UK politician and public figure. He was a member of the European Parliament and leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). Farage is best known as the leader of the Brexit movement.
We might not like what he says and can have a complete opposite political opinion but we can not deny that Farage is popular among UK voters. Farage had his UK bank accounts at Coutts & Co., famous as the “Queen’s Banker”. Coutts closed his bank accounts and ordered him to remove all of his funds. But Farage filed a claim to obtain the files on which the bank based its decision. The result was more than surprising: The documents showed that his finances were sound but his political opinions were not consistent with Coutts’s values.
This closing of account is not about Nigel Farage. This is a matter concerning all of us. If public banks can do this to a public and influential person like Farage, they can do it to anybody. But imagine when CBDC is the only money you can pay with and governments use this currency to create a social and political profile of you!
I just mention here the Canadian Freedom Convoy, when a series of protests and blockades by a group of truckers in Canada against COVID vaccine mandates and restrictions simply annoyed Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Deputy PM and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. They quickly seized assets and froze the bank accounts of truckers and even those who supported the truckers financially. Truckers were held in jail without bail, had no money to support themselves and their families, and they lost their livelihoods because their trucks were confiscated.
In my opinion, if CBDC is introduced as the sole mean of payment, we are close to create a George Orwell 1984 scenario, a severe thread to your privacy and personal freedom.
Sven Franssen