Tag: digital currency

Digital Dystopia: Lessons from the Global IT Outage on the Perils of Cashless Living

As a global IT outage wreaks havoc on digital payment systems, mainstream media finally sounds the alarm on cashless society risks – but for truth-tellers like Sayer Ji, the warning comes too late.

The Growing Threat of a Cashless Society: Lessons from the Global IT Outage

In a startling shift, major British newspapers have begun highlighting the dangers of a fully cashless society following a widespread IT outage that crippled digital payment systems across the globe. This event has brought to light the inherent fragility of our increasingly digitized financial infrastructure and serves as a stark reminder of the vital role cash still plays in our economy.

The Chaos of Digital Dependency

On July 19, 2024, a content update by cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike caused millions of Microsoft systems worldwide to crash. As reported by Nick Corbishley for Naked Capitalism, this outage had far-reaching consequences:

“When a content update by the cyber-security giant CrowdStrike caused millions of Microsoft systems around the world to crash on Friday morning, bringing the operating systems of banks, payment card firms, airlines, hospitals, NHS clinics, retailers and hospitality businesses to a standstill, businesses were faced with a stark choice: go cash-only, or close until the systems came back online.”

This incident laid bare the vulnerability of our tightly coupled IT-based societies, particularly in the realm of banking and payments. The fallout was especially severe in countries like Australia, where cashless transactions have been actively encouraged by the government.

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Is this the end of 1p and 2p coins? Treasury orders NO new coins to be minted for first time amid decline in cash payments as officials consider scrapping coppers altogether

The Treasury has made no orders to the Royal Mint for new coins to be minted for the first time amid a decline in cash payments, with officials considering scrapping coppers altogether. 

No new 1p and 2p coins are expected to be ordered in the coming years with proposals being worked on to be put to ministers over the future of the coinage, reported the Evening Standard. 

If the coppers are scrapped it would be the first time a coin was taken out of circulation in 40 years when the half-penny ceased in 1984. 

The 1p and 2p coins’ future has been in a precarious state in recent years with Bank of England governor Mark Carney previously hinting they could be ditched as Britons increasingly move towards a cashless society. 

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The Real Reason Behind the Push for Digital Currencies and the Elimination of Cash

In recent years, there has been a noticeable shift towards digital currencies and the elimination of cash. Governments, banks, and tech giants all seem to be singing the same tune: the future is digital. But what lies beneath this harmonious chorus? Is it really about convenience and efficiency, or is there a deeper motive at play?

Control and Surveillance

One of the primary drivers behind the push for digital currencies is the unprecedented level of control and surveillance they offer. Unlike cash transactions, which are inherently anonymous, digital transactions can be traced, monitored, and recorded. This means that every financial move you make can be scrutinized. For those in power, this represents a significant advantage. It allows for the monitoring of spending habits, the detection of illegal activities, and the ability to track the flow of money with pinpoint accuracy.

With digital currencies, governments and financial institutions can gather a treasure trove of data. They can see where you shop, what you buy, and even your travel patterns. This data can be used to build comprehensive profiles of individuals and groups, providing insights into behavior and preferences. In essence, it offers a level of surveillance that was previously unimaginable.

Financial Control

Beyond surveillance, digital currencies provide a mechanism for enhanced financial control. Cash is tangible and can be stored privately, away from prying eyes. Digital currencies, however, exist in a realm where access can be controlled and restricted. This means that in times of economic uncertainty or political unrest, governments can exert control over digital funds in ways that are impossible with cash.

Imagine a scenario where access to your money could be limited or frozen with the click of a button. This could be justified under the guise of preventing crime, terrorism, or even managing economic crises. The reality is that it gives those in power an unprecedented tool to control the populace. In extreme cases, this could be used to suppress dissent or force compliance with governmental policies. Even more concerning is the potential for governments to cut off access to funds as a way to control speech. If you speak out against the government or engage in activities they disapprove of, they could simply restrict your access to your own money, effectively silencing you by limiting your ability to function in society.

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World’s Oldest Central Bank Keeps Sounding Alarm On Fragility Of Cashless Economies

At a time when the dominant narrative around cash is that its demise is all but inevitable, as well as broadly desirable, the 2024 payment report by Sweden’s Riksbank may offer a cautionary tale. 

In October last year, in More Good News for Cash in Europe, More Bad News for Digital Dollar in US, we reported that recent developments suggest that the trend away from cash and toward purely digital-only payment systems may not be quite as smooth or as seamless as some may have wished or expected. One of the developments we highlighted in that report was growing concern among central bankers and politicians in Sweden, one of Europe’s most cashless economies, about the unintended consequences of driving cash out of the economy:

Even by late 2020, Sweden had less cash in circulation than just about anywhere else in the world, at around 1% of gross domestic product, according to the latest available data. That compares with 8% in the U.S. and more than 10% in the euro area. As a recent piece in Interesting Engineering notes, Sweden is already “officially cashless”:

Cash is never needed, not even for small purchases like hot chocolate at a Christmas market in Stockholm. All vendors have a mobile payment chip-and-PIN card reader like the one offered by Stockholm-based mobile payments company iZettle, or they accept payments through the mobile application Swish. Swishing is perhaps the easiest way of payment for everyone.

The Risks of Going Fully Cashless

But now the country is beginning to realise that an almost exclusively digital payments system comes with significant risks, especially at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions. In time-honoured fashion, the article in the UK Telegraph began with a spot of fearmongering about Vladimir Putin.

“People started to realise that it is very easy for Vladimir Putin to switch everything off,” Björn Eriksson, a retired police chief, former head of Interpol and leading cash advocate, told the Telegraph.  “At first we were arguing for vulnerable people, the elderly, women in abusive relationships who rely on cash… Now we are talking about national security. And it’s not only Putin, it could also be organised crime.”

In 2021, the Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank (and the world’s oldest), introduced a new directive obliging the country’s six largest credit institutions to continue providing their customers with certain basic cash services.

But while that may have meant that people in Sweden can continue to access cash from their local branch, it is becoming increasingly difficult to use it as fewer and fewer retail businesses accept notes and coins.

This is partly due to the greater convenience of handling digital payments while the card processing fees are substantially lower than the US. But it is also because most Swedes, including many pensioners, prefer to use cards or mobile payments. As a baker in Stockholm told the Telegraph, “the only people who bring cash to the shop are tourists. I feel bad for them because they just take the krona home, where it is useless.”

But even that trend may be reversing. According to Eriksson, a growing number of young people are joining the pro-cash movement — and mainly over privacy concerns.

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Unification Of CBDCs? Global Banks Are Telling Us The End Of The Dollar System Is Near

World reserve status allows for amazing latitude in terms of monetary policy. The Federal Reserve understands that there is constant demand for dollars overseas as a means to more easily import and export goods. The dollar’s petro-status also makes it essential for trading oil globally. This means that the central bank of the US has been able to create fiat currency from thin air to a far higher degree than any other central bank on the planet while avoiding the immediate effects of hyperinflation.

Much of that cash as well as dollar denominated debt (physical and digital) ends up in the coffers of foreign central banks, international banks and investment firms where it is held as a hedge or used to adjust the exchange rates of other currencies for trade advantage. As much as one-half of the value of all U.S. currency is estimated to be circulating abroad.

World reserve status along with various debt instruments allowed the US government and the Fed to create tens of trillions of dollars in new currency after the 2008 credit crash, all while keeping inflation under control (sort of). The problem is that this system of stowing dollars overseas only lasts so long and eventually the consequences of overprinting come home to roost.

The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 established the framework for the rise of the US dollar and while the benefits are obvious, especially for the banks, there are numerous costs involved. Think of world reserve status as a “deal with the devil” – You get the fame, you get the fortune, you get the hot girlfriend and the sweet car, but one day the devil is coming to collect and when he does he’s going to take EVERYTHING, including your soul.

Unfortunately, I suspect the time is coming soon for the US and it may be in the form of a brand new Bretton Woods-like system that removes the dollar as world reserve and replaces it with a new digital basket structure. Global banks are essentially admitting to the plan for a complete overhaul of the dollar-based financial world and the creation of a CBDC-centric system built on “unified ledgers.”

There have been three recent developments all announced in succession that suggest the dollar’s replacement is imminent (before this decade is over).

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Nigeria’s digital prison has been built and the gates are closing

The digital ID, whose launch is supported by the Central Bank of Nigeria (“CBN”) and the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (“NIBSS”), will have payments and social service delivery functions and will facilitate access to other services including travel, health insurance information, microloans, agriculture, food stamps, transport and energy subsidies, just to mention a few, with payment and financial services being powered by a central bank pre-paid/debit/credit card scheme dubbed AfriGo.

Among other features, the digital ID card will have a machine-readable zone in line with the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (“ICAO’s”) standards for biometric passports, a QR code that will contain the holder’s National Identification Number (“NIN”), and the possibility for face and fingerprints biometric authentication as the primary medium for identity verification through the data on the card chip, Biometric Update said.

Effectively, Nigeria’s new digital ID is linked to a person’s central bank account.  Nigeria already has a CBDC, the eNaira, which was launched in October 2021.  One of the reasons the eNaira was needed, it is claimed, was to increase financial inclusion by allowing those with a mobile phone but without a bank account to have access to the CBDC through their smartphones.

Smartphones are also linked to people’s digital IDs; the process has been far from voluntary.  In December 2023, companies offering telecommunications services in Nigeria were given a fresh order from the federal government to entirely block all phone Subscriber Identity Module (“SIM”) cards not linked to the biometrics-backed NIN by 28 February 2024.

Since April 2022, an order for the partial block of over 70 million SIM cards not linked to the owner’s digital ID has been in place. However, it is a one-way barring as only outgoing calls are not supported on such SIM cards. From 28 February 2024 therefore, all categories of SIM cards whose owners have not done the NIN linkage will be fully deprived of access to all call and data services, Biometric Update said.

For Nigeria, the totalitarian system of control – the perimeters of the electronic prison which will be used to restrict and control every aspect of people’s lives and the entire population – is now in place.

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RFK Jr. warns Americans ‘will be slaves’ if central bank digital currency is established

Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared in no uncertain terms recently that establishing a Central Bank Digital Currency in the country will be “the end of freedom; we will be slaves if we allow that to happen.”

In a wide-ranging discussion at the University of Austin about freedom of speech and civil discourse, Kennedy said he didn’t “get” the connection between CBDCs and the loss of freedom of expression and other freedoms until he witnessed the Canadian trucker protest.

“The truckers in Canada were protesting the COVID mandates, the lockdowns, masking mandates, vaccination mandates, and others,” Kennedy began. “They started in Alberta. They picked up thousands of trucks as they drove across Canada to Ottawa.”

When they got to Ottawa — they were trying to petition Prime Minister Trudeau — and they were exercising a right that we all take for granted in this country: the right to assemble, the right to protest, the right to petition their government, and the government instead condemned them as right-wing fascists and racists, which if you look at the videos, they’re the opposite. Looks like Woodstock. They were delivering bottled water, they were cooking food for the poor, they were picking up garbage. There were musicians on every block.

It was really a beautiful thing.

However, the Trudeau government perceived the protesters to be an existential threat.

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Federal Reserve Declares CBDC a “Key Duty” to Congress, Despite Public Statements Attempting To Downplay Its Focus

The Fed (US Federal Reserve, the central bank) does not appear to be one of those institutions whose word you could, so to speak – take to the bank.

Just as it is reassuring the public that it is not focusing on introducing a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the country, the Fed has only recently been telling Congress that steps leading to a digital dollar are among its “7 key duties.”

This is according to Congressman Tom Emmer, who posted a document on X on March 14, explaining that his office received it as the Fed representatives were in Congress for a presentation.

What caused the alarm is the mention of Automated Clearinghouse and FedNow among the “key duties,” as these payment systems are seen as a way to move towards a CBDC.

It’s been two years since the US Central Bank first came out with a paper looking into this possibility, and is also linked with the Digital Dollar Project, so this should not be seen as controversial per se.

However, just one week before the presentation document Congressman Emmer was referring to when he posted, “If you don’t think the Fed is pursuing a CBDC, think again” – the Fed was in the Senate, where Chairman Jerome Powell told the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee that adopting or even recommending a US CBDC was a something that was “nowhere near (…) in any form.”

“People don’t need to worry about it,” Powell also said.

But people do, and that was true even before this latest development commented on by Emmer. The ability of the state to impose financial surveillance over the population – in the vein of what is already happening in China in earnest – is the main reason for this.

The most vocal opponents in Congress are Republicans, while former President Donald Trump, who is likely to run for office again later this year, has vowed to stop a US CBDC, describing it as “a dangerous threat to freedom.”

However, the Fed – despite its chair appearing to be convincing America that this “danger” is in no way imminent, has had highly positioned officials like Vice Chairman Lael Brainard push for it.

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The Sinister Links Between Jeffrey Epstein, CBDCs, & Bitcoin

The purpose of this article is to create awareness of the urgent threat of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), to discuss and describe Jeffrey Epstein’s potential involvement in both funding CBDCs as well as his possible role in changing the underlying purpose of Bitcoin, rendering it unusable as a cash alternative for day-to-day transactions.

The article also provides a snippet from my book, The Final Countdown, which goes into detail and further provides practical advice for avoiding CBDCs. 

The CBDC Threat

Imagine a future where every dollar you spend is tracked – not by a bank, but by the government. This isn’t a distant sci-fi scenario; it’s a real possibility with the advent of Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs. These are not just new forms of money; they are potentially powerful tools for monitoring and controlling human behavior.

The concept is simple yet profound – a digital currency issued by the government that can be programmed with specific rules. For instance, your savings could be frozen if your online activities don’t align with governmental standards, or mandatory spending could be enforced to stimulate the economy. This level of control could extend to everyday choices, dictating the groceries you buy or the vacations you can access, all based on a digital scoring system.

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CBDCs are steeped in human rights abuses and are a new way to track citizens

Many people regularly use multiple forms of digital money.  We make digital payments using credit, debit, and prepaid cards, as well as mobile payment apps like PayPal.

It’s not just payments that have gone digital. Nearly every financial institution offers services – from savings accounts to mortgages – via mobile applications.

So, money is already widely available in digital form. The current system works so well that few people ever take the time to worry about whether the digital money they are using is a liability of, for example, Visa or a liability of their bank.

So why are governments considering implementing CBDCs?

Unlike the current system of digital money, with CBDCs, digital money would be a liability of the central bank. In other words, governments have the direct responsibility to hold, transfer or otherwise remit those funds to the ostensible owner. This feature creates a direct link between citizens and the central bank. And it is this feature that opens the door to so many human rights concerns when it comes to the adoption of CBDCs.

These concerns cover issues of financial privacy, freedom, stability and cybersecurity.  The Human Rights Foundation’s (“HRF’s”) CBDC Tracker website notes the following as the concerns regarding CBDCs:

  • Sweeping financial surveillance. Around the world, governments routinely pressure banks and other financial institutions to supply customer information. From Canada to Russia, this practice has become all too common. The difference between what is experienced today and what would be experienced with a CBDC, however, is that the financial records would be on government databases by default. In other words, a CBDC could spell doom for what little protection remains because it would give governments complete visibility into every financial transaction.
  • Restricting financial activity.
  • Freezing funds.
  • Seizing funds.
  • Imposing negative interest rates.  Proposals for CBDCs often tout negative interest rates as a benefit because it would offer policymakers “greater control” over the economy. For citizens, however, a negative interest rate amounts to a fine or tax for saving money.
  • Disrupting financial stability.
  • Disrupting cryptocurrency.  Globally, governments have demonstrated that they want a CBDC specifically to hold on to their monopoly over national currencies. For instance, China banned cryptocurrencies just as its CBDC was launched; India announced its plans for a CBDC while simultaneously calling for a ban on cryptocurrency; and Nigeria prohibited banks from cryptocurrency transactions just as it launched its CBDC.
  • Putting the economy at risk of cyberattacks.
  • Creating a new tool for corruption.

For additional information on concerns regarding the risks of CBDCs, HRF recommends the Cato Institute’s webpage titled ‘The Risks of CBDCs: Why Central Bank Digital Currencies Shouldn’t Be Adopted’ and report titled ‘Central Bank Digital Currency: Assessing the Risks and Dispelling the Myths’.

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