CBDCs are the “perversion of cryptocurrency”

Ex-whistleblower and data protection extremist Edward Snowden has expressed himself in a detailed opinion article on the subject of CBDCs. He sees in them an expropriation of the citizens and thus a threat.

It is the “newest threat to appear on the public horizon,” writes Edward Snowden on his blog. We are talking about CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies). For Snowden, there is no useful application for CBDCs that actually benefits citizens.

“I’m going to tell you what a CBDC isn’t – it’s not, as Wikipedia might tell you, a digital dollar. After all, most dollars are already digital and exist not as something folded in your wallet but as an entry in a bank’s database that is faithfully queried and reproduced under the glass of your phone. A central bank digital currency is also not a government version of a cryptocurrency – at least not the cryptocurrency that pretty much everyone in the world who uses it currently understands. “

Snowden implicitly asks the question of what digital central bank currencies are good for if they are superfluous as digital representations of the national fiat currencies, and comes to a clear conclusion.

In his opinion, a CBDC is not an innovation, but represents “a perversion of the crypto currency, or at least the founding principles and protocols of the crypto currency”. CBDCs are “crypto-fascist currencies” that only serve the purpose of providing their users with “the fundamental property of theirs Refusing money and installing the state as an intermediary for every transaction. “

In fact, Snowden’s fears are not entirely out of thin air, even if they are formulated sharply as usual. He describes the theoretical possibility that the state could give the “money” an expiration date in a CBDC in order to induce consumers to buy or investors to invest. China took a similar approach in one of the many test phases of the digital yuan. They raffled off the digital currency free of charge, but distributed it on condition that users spend it or lose it again within a specified period – technically no problem.

For Snowden, digital central bank currencies are instruments that are only intended to deprive citizens of their financial freedom, which is why he strictly rejects them. He asks the governments:

“Of all the things that could be centralized and nationalized in this poor man’s life, should it really be his money?”