Tag: digital currency

The Surveillance Net Is Closing, But the Smart Ones Can See the Writing on the Wall

The privacy coin Zano just rallied nearly 70 percent in the last 30 days, lifting its market cap toward a quarter billion dollars and pushing daily trading volume close to three million. The spike isn’t about speculation alone. It reflects a shift underway as people begin to hedge against a tightening surveillance state.

The latest proof of financial control came just last month, when Tether froze $49.6 million in USDT at regulators’ request during a coordinated international crackdown. Regardless of the guilt or innocence of the targets, the lesson is obvious. These assets can be frozen in an instant, with no trial and no process, making them less a hedge against the state and more a compliant extension of it. 

Congress reinforced this fact with the GENIUS Act, a law that hard-wires surveillance into stablecoins by forcing issuers to operate under bank-style oversight, AML regimes, and reserve mandates. The fact that Democrats and Republicans both lined up behind it should tell you everything. In Washington, true bipartisan consensus only happens when war, debt, or control are on the line.

That same logic now extends to the streets. National Guard units are being deployed into American cities to “fight crime,” but the justification is always the same: safety over freedom. Deployments like this normalize militarization at home and make clear that the tools built for foreign wars are now being pointed inward. 

The grid doesn’t stop at the barrel of a gun either. It runs through data. Federal agencies have been caught buying location data from brokers like Venntel to track millions of Americans without warrants. The AT&T Hemisphere program continues to funnel call records to law enforcement, building a quiet dragnet with virtually no oversight. License plate readers vacuum up hundreds of millions of scans, with databases shared across jurisdictions and tapped for immigration enforcement. Flock Safety’s license-plate readers generated 1,400+ immigration-related searches in Denver and 113 million scans in a year in Austin, triggering local backlash over data-sharing and policy violations. This is mass movement tracking, normalized street by street. All of this happens without a vote, without consent, and in most cases without warrants.

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The Quiet Rebranding Of CBDCs As “Digital-ID”

Let’s call them for what they are: Social Credit systems.

We know that “CBDC” stands for Central Bank Digital Currencies – and we have long held our hypothesis on what those entail (the TL;DR is that they will either launch as, or morph into, China-style social credit systems).

We’ve seen an Executive Order expressly ruling out CBDCs in the US, but as I keep warning readers: we’re seeing components we’d expect to see under a CBDC system appearing – only they aren’t originating at The Fed (who has never really expressed an interest in them, anyway).

Now the US Treasury Department is seeking comments on Digital ID as it relates to DeFi:

“The Department of the Treasury has filed a request for public comments to provide input on the use of “innovative or novel methods to detect and mitigate illicit finance risks involving digital assets” in accordance with the GENIUS Act, as well as in accordance with Donald Trump’s policy to support “the responsible growth and use of digital assets,” as outlined in the President’s Executive Order to strengthen US leadership in digital financial technology.”

— TheRage.co

The areas covered range from:

“the use of APIs “to help enforce strict access controls, monitor transactions and activities, and bolster security and integrity of financial institutions providing digital asset services”, the use of Artificial Intelligence to “make predictions, recommendations or decisions” to “effectively identify illicit finance patterns, risks, trends, and typologies”, and blockchain monitoring to “evaluate high-risk counterparties and activities, analyze transactions across multiple blockchains,trace or monitor transaction activities, and identify patterns that indicate potential illicit transactions.”

As well as Digital ID (which I think is the catch-phrase we’re going to see a lot of in the future, that will capture a lot of the objectives of CBDCs)

“the treasury is also seeking comments on the introduction of “portable digital identity credentials designed to support various elements of AML/CFT and sanctions compliance, maximize user privacy, and reduce compliance burden on financial institutions” to potentially be used “by decentralized finance (DeFi) services’ smart contracts to automatically check for a credential before executing a user’s transaction.”

Sounds similar to what the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) wants to do in terms of rating individual crypto wallets for AML compliance.

In a white paper titled An approach to anti-money laundering compliance for cryptoassets they propose to:

“leverag[e] the provenance and history of any particular unit or balance of a cryptoasset, including stablecoins”

In order to assign an “AML compliance score”.

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Dystopian Rollout Of Digital IDs & CBDCs Is Happening

This isn’t conspiracy; it’s all in their own documentation.

They are building a full-spectrum digital cage, and its two locked doors are Digital Identity and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). You cannot have one without the other.

The plan is to replace your government-issued ID with a Digital ID, but it’s not just a card in your phone. It is fundamentally built upon your immutable biometrics: your fingerprints, the precise structure of your face, the unique pattern of your iris.

This biometric data is the key.

It is the hard link that ties your physical body directly to your digital identity credential.

Your very body becomes your password. The reason this is so critical for them is the financial system. UN & Bank for International Settlements docs overtly state that Digital ID and CBDCs are designed to be integrated.

The system cannot exist without this biometric digital ID.

Why?

Know Your Customer (KYC) protocols.

For this new digital financial system to function, they must absolutely “know” every single participant. Your digital wallet will be tied to your digital ID, which is mapped to your biometrics. Total financial-biological linkage.

We see the prototypes being rolled out now:

  • Sam Altman’s WorldCoin lures people to scan their irises for a “unique identifier” and a digital wallet. This is the exact model.
  • The UN’s “Building Blocks” program forces refugees to scan their iris at checkout to receive food rations. The value is deducted from a wallet tied to that biometric ID.

They justify this total surveillance under the guise of closing the “identity gap,” claiming the world’s poor need digital IDs to access essential services like banking and healthcare.

The reality?

This is the ultimate onboarding mechanism into a system of programmable control, where your access to society and your own money is permissioned and revocable based on your compliance.

This is the bedrock of the new global financial system.

It is not about convenience. It is about control.

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UK Data Use and Access Act – Digital Wallets Coming

The Data (Use and Access) Act, also known as the DUA Bill, has provided the UK government with the ability to roll out a series of programs that will eventually force citizens to participate in a digital ID program. The law was enacted with the premise of reinforcing security and providing convenience for businesses and individuals, with the true goal of surrendering all data and control to government authorities.

The UK government has eased the public into the concept by launching digital verification services. Phase one enabled citizens to voluntarily create a digital identity to streamline the right to work and the right to rent procedures and provide access to age-restricted products. Phase two will create a foundation for Digital Verification Services (DVS) and government oversight of digital identities. Approved services will receive a trust mark to note that they have been verified by the government. The program is currently in a pilot phase but the government plans to move full speed ahead by the end of the year.

“This independent certification process has given lots of organisations across the UK economy the confidence to start accepting digital identity. In some parts of the economy though government or businesses need extra assurance, beyond the requirements in the trust framework, before a digital identity can be used,” the government noted, later adding, “We estimate that hundreds of thousands of right to work, right to rent and disclosure and barring checks each month are now taking place using digital identity services providers; but that’s just the small step towards a much bigger transformation we want to enable through our work.”

In two years, after people are accustomed to creating and using their digital identity, the government plans to launch a digital wallet (GOV.UK Wallet) that will store citizens’ official government-issued documents. The Home Affairs Committee launched an inquiry into the risks associated with this digital ID, with industries and watchdog services raising a red flag over concerns regarding government overreach and surveillance. Critics are also concerned about the true security measures a centralized database could offer as data breaches and unauthorized access are possible. The initial attempt to create GOV.UK failed and cost the government £200 million and there is no currently publicly disclosed total cost of the plans to create a new version.

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EU Digital ID Wallet Trials Near End Amid Privacy Concerns

Potential, one of the consortia selected to trial the EU’s planned Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, is preparing to conclude its work by September 2025.

The group, which came together in 2023, has played a role in laying the foundation for a system that privacy advocates warn could dramatically expand the surveillance and data collection capabilities of both governments and private companies.

The EU’s original target of launching the wallet in 2024 has already shifted, with the current deadline now pushed back to 2026.

Over the course of its mandate, Potential coordinated with 155 organizations across 19 countries, drawing in major corporations including Idemia, Thales, Amadeus, and Namirial.

Together, they developed six proposed uses for the digital wallet, covering activities such as opening a bank account, registering SIM or eSIM cards, accessing government services, using a mobile driving license, applying a Qualified eSignature, and presenting electronic prescriptions.

Each of these use cases, while framed as a convenience for citizens, raises questions about how personal data will be stored, shared, and protected in this new ecosystem.

A series of large-scale tests have already been conducted. The first remote trials began in May 2024. February 2025 saw cross-border testing in Warsaw, where 15 national wallets and 20 services exchanged data in peer-to-peer mode.

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Top Canadian bank studies possible use of digital dollar for ‘basic’ online payments

Canada’s central bank has been studying ways to introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for use for online retailers, according to a new report, despite the fact that recent research suggests Canadians are wary of any type of digital dollar.

In a new 47-page report titled, “A Retail CBDC Design For Basic Payments Feasibility Study,” which was released on June 13, 2025, the Bank of Canada (BOC) identified a “promising architecture well-suited for basic payments” through the use of a digital dollar.

The report reads that CBDCs “can be fast and cheap for basic payments, with high privacy, although some areas such as integration with retail payments systems, performance of auditing and resilience of the core system state require further investigation.”

While the report authors stopped short of fully recommending a CBDC, they noted it is a decision that could happen “outside the scope of this analysis.”

“Our framing highlights other promising architectures for an online retail CBDC, whose analysis we leave as an area for further exploration,” reads the report.

When it comes to a digital Canadian dollar, the Bank of Canada last year found that Canadians are very wary of a government-backed digital currency, concluding that a “significant number” of citizens would resist the implementation of such a system.

Indeed, a 2023 study found that most Canadians, about 85 percent, do not want a digital dollar, as previously reported by LifeSiteNews.

The study found that a “significant number” of Canadians are suspicious of government overreach and would resist any measures by the government or central bank to create digital forms of official money.

The BOC has said that it would continue to look at other countries’ use and development of CBDCs and will work with other “central banks” to improve so-called cross border payments.

Last year, as reported by LifeSiteNews, the BOC has already said that plans to create a digital “dollar,” also known as a central bank digital currency (CBDC), have been shelved.

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French justice minister calls for abolishing cash

France’s Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin has proposed abolishing cash transactions, arguing that digital payments – including cryptocurrencies – are much easier to trace than physical money and would help authorities combat drug trafficking and other criminal activity.

Restrictions on cash transactions in France and across the EU have already tightened in recent years.

Speaking before a Senate commission on Thursday, Darmanin said that “a large part of daily delinquency and even criminal networks rely on cash,” and declared that “the end of cash would prevent the establishment of drug dealing points.”

Darmanin, who previously oversaw public finances as Minister of Public Action and Accounts, acknowledged that banning physical money wouldn’t eliminate the drug trade, but insisted that “once the money is traceable,” it becomes “more complicated” for both consumers and dealers to escape financial oversight.

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ECB Partners With Big Tech to Launch Controversial Digital Euro Amid Privacy Concerns and US Opposition

The European Central Bank (ECB) – an institution of the European Union (EU) – is working to engineer the digital euro, the EU’s own central bank digital currency (CBDC).

In doing so, ECB is partnering with those skeptical observers might expect in this club: multinationals and multi-billion dollar companies, like Ireland-headquartered Accenture, and Germany’s largest semiconductor maker Infineon Technologies – but also 70 others from the financial, fintech, business, and payment services sectors.

This is happening via a project framed as as an “innovation platform” that was announced just this week, for the purpose of looking into the ways of introducing a centralized form of digital currency – which is merely a highly “controllable” version of fiat money, but also one with strong potential of facilitating “next level” mass surveillance of citizens.

Many things coming out of the EU these days seem like they are crafted not by leaders or even politicians, but by PR teams, for immediate “feelgood” impact, either to obscure the substance of various initiatives and policies – or to obscure the fact there is no substance to them.

Here, ECB has presented its project as an effort carried out by two groups: “Pioneers,” and “Visionaries.”

The first is supposed to deal with developing the technical infrastructure and doing the testing, whereas “Visionaries” are tasked with implementing – and promoting – those solutions.

Here’s an example of what that may involve: “(Exploring) enabling digital euro wallet access via post offices, potentially benefiting those without traditional bank accounts.”

The big picture, the sum total of CBDCs is the role of these currencies in the ongoing “war on cash” as a form of “disfavored” privacy and anonymity.

But naturally, the likes of Piero Cipollone, who sits on ECB’s Executive Board, will talk about the digital euro as “a potential catalyst for financial innovation” and other purely positive and difficult-to-contest goals.

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Inside CBDC’s Anti-Trump Rebrand

The planned rollout of a planet-wide network of “interoperable” digital currencies has shifted gears this year.

Digital Currency is still the endgame, but – in keeping with the spirit of the age – it seems they are changing the method to create the illusion of sides and choices.

We covered this briefly our most recent This Week in the New Normal, but it’s worth a deeper dive.

For years now OffG (and many others in the alternative media sphere) have covered the plans for programmable digital currency as a means for technocratic social control. This goal is years old, but first came to real prominence in the wake of the Covid “pandemic” and the attempted re-shaping of our entire society that entailed.

From 2020 to 2023, the development of “central bank digital currencies” (CBDCs) around the world was a steady upward line, reaching its peak when 130+ of the 197 nations on the planet, representing over 98% of the world’s economic output, were in the process of developing their own CBDC.

But then things went quiet, and some nations – including Japan and Canada – announced they would no longer be moving forward with their CBDC.

Why that would be I couldn’t say, except to speculate that concerns about control and privacy became too widely publicized, and market research indicated too much public scepticism to proceed.

Evidence for this can be found in the FinTech article “Bank of Canada Puts CBDC Development on Ice: Is This Indicative of Global CBDC Demise?”, from September 2024:

“The truth is that people don’t really want CBDCs,” says Stuart Connolly, CIO at investment and operating company Deus X Capital. He explains that concerns about freedom and privacy are still rife when it comes to CBDCs. “They have been roundly rejected by the business and crypto communities, and privacy advocates have campaigned against them because they are best suited to authoritarian economies where transparency can infringe upon freedoms and the creation of money and wealth are heavily controlled. Ultimately, there are few benefits to CBDCs and they simply aren’t compelling.”

That’s just an opinion of one man, of course, but it does jive with my instinctive feeling – CBDCs got too much bad press, and a shift in tactics was needed.

This brings us to 2025. There has been more movement on the CBDC front this year.

On April 9th the EU published the final draft of its “Digital Euro Bill”, and then just a few days ago, the European Central Bank announced a deal with 70 corporate trading partners to test “usage cases” for digital Euro transactions.

In the UK, the Bank of England is testing out offline payment systems for the Digital Pound.

Canada just *ahem* “elected” Mark Carney as their new Prime Minister, and while the Bank of Canada allegedly “scaled down” work on its CBDC last year, Carney has expressed very clear pro-CBDC thoughts in the past. It wouldn’t be shocking to see it restarted in a new “elbows up, look at us standing up to Donald Trump” context.

Indeed, that’s now the heart of the CBDC story.

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WEF Launches Connected Future Initiative to Promote Global Digital Public Infrastructure with Backing from UN, EU, and Bill Gates

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has announced the launch of the Connected Future Initiative, the latest among its efforts to promote what is known as Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI).

The global scheme, aiming to introduce digital IDs, digital payments, and data exchange platforms by 2030, counts the UN, the EU, and Bill Gates among its major supporters.

The WEF presents its new initiative as a way to establish the parameters for public-private cooperation, and “unlock the full potential of globally scaled, interoperable and future-ready digital public infrastructure.”

Those behind the initiative suggest their goal is to essentially strengthen DPI by incorporating technologies like extended reality (XR) and quantum computing, in addition to AI and biometrics, while pushing for global standards and DPI interoperability.

WEF also promises that the new initiative is supposed to secure “ethical and responsible” innovation, and lumps in issues like governance, data privacy concerns (as the second on the list), and equitable access while deploying “next-gen DPI.”

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