Parents’ group UsForThem, who had their accounts temporarily closed by PayPal last year at the same time as the Free Speech Union and the Daily Sceptic, is urging the U.K. regulator to demand transparency and free speech assurances from the finance giant before granting it a full license. The Telegraph has more.
PayPal, the multi-billion-pound online payments service, is currently operating under a temporary licence but hopes to be granted full permission to operate in Britain permanently by the end of the year.
The service was previously allowed to operate in the U.K. under an agreement throughout Europe, but since Brexit has been on temporary licence.
It has until December to get approval from the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for a full licence but has become embroiled in the de-banking scandal after several groups claimed their accounts were shut suddenly.
The U.S. payments company was last year accused of shutting down accounts for political motives after temporarily closing the accounts of UsForThem, the parents’ group that fought to keep schools open during the pandemic, as well as the Free Speech Union and its founder Toby Young without any clear explanation.
It later reinstated the accounts following a backlash from MPs.
Other groups that had their accounts shut down by PayPal last year included Left Lockdown Sceptics, which describes itself as a “socialist collective” opposed to government lockdown measures.
However, as customers ask banks for internal communications about their accounts using “subject access requests”, PayPal has now been accused of failing to meet its legal requirements to hand over information on customers.
Ben Kingsley, Head of Legal Affairs at UsForThem, said that PayPal had not provided information the campaign group had requested on its account closure and demanded the FCA intervene.
He said PayPal was “refusing to comply with its legal obligations under U.K. and European law to disclose the information it holds which explains why it de-banked UsForThem in September 2022”.
Mr. Kingsley said the provider “brazenly continues to ask the FCA to grant it a permanent licence” and said the regulator should demand that PayPal “justify its apparent breach of U.K. law and regulatory standards, and to suspend its licensing application in the meantime”.
He added: “The FCA must ensure that the only international financial businesses permitted to operate in the U.K. are those which commit to comply with applicable U.K. law and regulatory standards.
“This applies especially when businesses are as ubiquitous and influential as PayPal. The U.K. regulator should not allow itself to be steamrolled into granting a permanent licence to an organisation which has revealed itself to be disinterested in U.K. law and regulatory standards.”
Worth reading in full.
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We understand CDBCs and economics just fine thanks. Don’t patronise us.
What “problem” do CDBCs solve for me?
Does whoever is behind them have my best interests at heart and can they be trusted?
Is more Centralisation a good thing or a bad thing for me?
If there’s anyone who needs lessons in basics and need to look like he knows what he’s talking about, it’s the author.
Five (so far) sensitive souls are offended on behalf of the author as they think I have been horrid about him/her? Do speak up! Cat got your tongue?
I think the disjuncture between “normies” and “conspiracy” types is misunderstood. When the umbilical cord connecting us to the establishment irreparably snaps, we don’t all suddenly see a vast command and control structure. We see a swarm with confluence of interests and points of influence and some islands of command and control and a general direction of movement that mean systemic weaknesses and distortions are always moving policy in a the direction that lines the pockets of globalists. The globalists have outsized influence even out of proportion to their vast wealth – because they have the opportunity to strategically position themselves. Within the morass, there are then clear actual conspiracies, as occurred with the vaccines. And actually the documented evidence runs pretty deep in some of those areas when you look in detail.
so the author doesn’t get that there doesn’t have to be a spectre like organisation actually planning the implementation of this, with “plants” in a range of organisations, for it to very easily turn into something really bad and that that process is also inevitable. It is happening because it suits the general globalist pattern and has appeal to that mindset. So the projects get the go ahead more easily and the system will be co-opted and abused as soon as it is put in place.
Some believe this is fully planned. I personally prefer to say it is conceived by the DAVOS set, but not implemented with a clear project command and control structure. They just know the direction of travel can be smoothed and they will co-opt the process as it is. And that WILL happen as sure as eggs are eggs.
For me, normies are people in a profound state of delusion regarding the amount of consensus that exists for public policies.
They have the simplest of thought processes which goes like this: Our government and policymakers are voted in by us. They represent the wishes of the majority and if they didn’t they would be punished by being voted out and replaced with someone who will represent the people’s wishes.
This patently absurd idea is what normies use to rationalise the policies that are foisted on us. They rationalise their delusion because they are too frightened, too uninterested or simply too stupid to see the actually reality which you’ve described so well above.
Agree
I don’t know how much is coordinated but for sure we need government to generally do less and not more
Enforce the law, protect our borders, keep the peace, ensure energy and food security
All the things they don’t do in our interest, overwhelmed as they are by doing all the things against our interests.
Great comment. I think the conspiracy theorist starts from the believe that ‘surely this must be by design’. Unfortunately, the response to Covid can very much be explained by groupthink and various psychological biases/flaws. I find that more frightening to be honest.
Rats all fleeing a sinking ship in an apparently orderly fashion is not a conspiracy, it’s just what like-minded rats do.
Good analysis. And ‘conspirators’ might even be polar opposites as described by Baptists & Bootlegger Theory, but independently pursuing the same objective for different, even opposing reasons.
Agreed tof.
The government wants to introduce CBDC and what conclusions can I draw from that want?
CBDC’s are definitely not in my best interests.
If I have learnt anything these last 3.5 years it is that government proposals are never for my benefit.
I understand the plan is to have a Central, Central Bank issuing these things, controlled by the globalist tendency. And those paying attention certainly know what is among their agenda.
It’s the ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’, and certainly not the govt one.
The author does provide a good assessment of the situation, but perhaps misses the key point that as time goes on, the actions, and therefore perceived intent, of government(s) is reducing the fundamental bond of trust by the public, even beyond the point of reversal.
Govt should be the body that cares for, supports and provides the security we need to live peaceful daily lives, but has over recent years, slowly changed that relationship from ‘how can we serve you’ to ‘you *must* do this’. Take the govt’s covid response for instance – it ripped the heart out of society. Not just govts though, but also authorities are rapidly losing the public’s trust, drip by drip, e.g. Khan’s hated ULEZ, for which his claimed reasons just don’t stack up, and rather than being a carrot, is a stick, and a vanity project stick at that. Most people know where it’s going, to a pay-per-mile scheme for everyone, including EVs, not just the ~10% and reducing vehicles that are not compliant (but strangely are in other schemes).
CBDCs may be quite a while off, but the core question is, what does it benefit us? Why does the govt need to ‘do’ when it only needs to ensure safeguards are in place by the private entities that can ‘do’, and likely with innovation, ‘do’ it much better and more efficiently. The private sector are very good at creating new technologies, including for secure identity verification (I myself am involved in this area, so see it first hand). Govts, however, can never pick winners, and as soon as you see govt supporting or mandating something, you need to lock your wallet away.
Then, someone pointed out that not everyone with power and influence on such a system is a good person and not everyone is honest in their endeavours as Anonymous IT reporter and he felt a bit silly.
I see numerous flaws and errors in all this.
Governments already control and put limits on our money as it is. They do it by getting the banks to control us and our payments. That happens NOW.
You have to be a special kind of naive to think that I’m a new technology comes along that will allow them to do that better they won’t use it. If they need to take their time they will. If they need to do it bit by bit, they will. The only thing they won’t do is pass up the opportunity. That much you can take to the bank.
Haven’t got the technology – but technology doesn’t stand still.
And once done, will never be undone.
Indeed banks do know, and have used, such information. How else could bank of America create a list of those who had had transactions in Washington around January 6th, prioritising those who had pervious purchased firearms?
So why did Visa start bragging a few months ago that they could report on the carbon footprint of your purchases? You also miss an important point, that ‘undesirables’ (in the view of the authorities) can be far more easily controlled via CBDCs that may be the only way of transacting, initially, with the government. So political groups and those with unfashionable views are more vulnerable to state control.
Visa ‘looking at your carbon footprint’ is exactly the kind of blind assumptive control that must never be allowed. For example, many petrol stations are now also a mini-supermarkets, so does buying eggs, milk, bread, etc. count towards your ‘carbon footprint’? All Visa sees is the establishment and an amount; “£35 at ESSO. Must be carbon, so a black mark for you”! I can imagine someone, somewhere, in the ‘CBDC development centre’ looking to see how the payment systems can be upgraded to see what you are buying, and like the web, classification engines are not just feasible, but can be built very quickly.
“going to struggle to get the support they need from MPs”
Only 5 MPs voted against the suicidal Climate Change Act.
None voted against the initial covid legislation – there wasn’t even a bloody vote!
CBDC… A complete and utter control of one’s consumption and consumerism…. We must resist with all our might for CBDCs are the end game.
Once CBDC’s are introduced all our wealth, our incomes, everything we thought we owned will have been stolen from us. Overnight.
That is the reality. No ifs, no buts.
How about “anyone with a few functioning brain cells?”
PS: the only loyalty card I have ever owned was a Nectar card. And I ditched that about 3 years ago …. about the same time I increased my use of cash. Sainsbury, and every other retailer, know SFA about me and my purchasing habits.
You can just predict that one by one, they’ll stop accepting cash.
I thought it was a good piece I enjoyed reading it, and I learned from it.
thank you to the writer.
Will I sign up for digital absolutely not. I agree banks etc systems are pretty poor so I don’t think it’s going to be smooth or in the time frame they want.
But I cannot trust governments or the large institutions they lost that when they showed their true characters during Covid.
I lack the knowledge to fully understand the author’s arguments here but one thing’s for sure – he has a greater faith in the nature of those in charge than I do –
6th para down, – “It would need new legislaton for a start, which would in turn need the support of the public”.
Lol. If the last 3.5 years have taught us anything it’s that The RPTB can do anything they want regardless of public opinion – which they “propaganderise” in any event.
Also in the same para I note the author “rescues these kind of projects for a living”…
Not just do anything they want regardless of public opinion (ye gods, look at Kahn and ULEZ – I should think 90% of the London population is against that money-grabbing, freedom-stealing con).
Governments across the Western world have been ignoring their own laws and constitutions, particularly during corona, and so many people seem to think they have a right do so. No, the law is binding on all of us; governments have procedures to change laws, but they cannot simply ignore as and when suits. Constitutions are there to guarantee fundamental rights and to protect us, the people, from government overreach, something the judiciary across the Western world seems to have been very keen to forget – if they were ever taught it in the first place.
I know you know all this, you’ve mentioned your legal background before
“No, the law is binding on all of us;”
Jane I disagree.
The last three and half years have shown that the law is not binding on us all and most certainly NOT on governments and their judiciary.
(Which is why I repeatedly point out that the IHR and Pandemic Preparedness Treaty are definitely NOT binding in any shape or form.)
The Law may be – if it’s Common Law, but legislation is just invention of a bunch of galoots to give them more power and give advantage to their cronies and supporters l it is NOT binding.
1215 Magna Carta. Sovereignty was ceded by King John to the People, binding his heirs and successors in perpetuity.
Parliament, the King are not sovereign over the People. What they dictate is not binding, it is imposed by the coercive powers of the State.
That may be so, common law and all that, but the bottom line, is it’s all down to who wields the biggest stick. And that ain’t Joe Public unless he/she arouse themselves from their slumbers.
Things could get interesting then. Though I fear I am fantasizing to even consider such a thing.
Perhaps I should have said “is supposed to be binding on all of us”
I was trying to make the point that an enormous number of people think governments have the right to just ignore any law they wish on the spot – be it legislation, common law, international law, etc. Formally speaking, they do not, they are bound by it just as we are. People need to realise that and realise that when a government breaks any given law, whether or not a majority of parliament has given them license, it is still breaking the law and they are nothing less than criminals.
Now, of course, in the real world, law only means something if it is enforced. There are 2 basic ways of doing so – with the compliance of the populace at large, who by and large abide by the law because they think it right, or by force. In the West we have not yet reached the stage where the government uses force a la China, and people need to wake up and do everything possible to make sure that never happens.
January 2022 – NL, virtually alone in the EU, still had the shops shut for O’micktake virus, because it was still trying to force the nazi pass through parliament. One fine Friday evening the shops said we’re opening tomorrow, no matter what, local mayors, in charge of local enforcement of government measures, said they would not enforce and within about an hour PM Rutte came on telly saying the shops could open. He had to back down, as otherwise the entire country would have realised that the emperor had no clothes on.
Thank you.
Yes… that was a real howler.
Climate change Act, banning ICE cars, banning coal-fired power stations, making electricity more expensive, banning gas central heating, creating 15 minute ghettos, ULEZ zones, mass immigration, going to war with Russia – all impossible without the support of the public.
And time we started saying “no”. I hear rumblings of a new covid variant, and calls from the usual suspects to reintroduce masking, distancing, etc. (Atlanta College in the USA has already done so), and a booster jab. No, no and no!
Anonymous IT reporter? Figures!
Only the elites will benefit from this giant financial set of shackles! There is and never will be anything good about this abomination
I can see no advantages for the average Joe from this. Cash has worked fine for centuries.
Now if charges were reduced as a consequence, that might help but that will not happen. Service jobs will be lost, branches will be closed and the banks will be further enriched.
” In practice, these will be the very same banks you use today. If you already trust your bank with your transactions, there is no reason to not trust them with CBDCs.”
Trust the banks – who are gleefully de-banking anyone who has conservative values or their staff appear to personally dislike?
Trust the banks – who indulged in what was, at the very least, greedy and irresponsible behaviour in the early 2000’s and had to be bailed out by taxpayers?
Trust the banks?
Why would we?
As promised, though not in any party manifesto, our future digital gulag is being built around the world, in lockstep, and in plain sight. CBDC is one of its cornerstones. Opponents are silenced by being told they don’t understand the technical issues involved. Sounds familiar. So I will pass, thanks, on any form of trust in the wisdom and good intentions of ‘experts’, or the idea that CBDC has any benign purpose or public benefit, or the ludicrous suggestion that our MPs might act as a bulwark against (rather than enthusiastic supporters of) our future oppression. Recent experience suggests otherwise.
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if there was an immutable law that said a govt could not pass any legislation/law that was not contained in their election manifesto. The same also for elections to local authorities. IoW, have them declare what they intend to do, and ensure they don’t do something else for which we’ve not given consent.
The public has seen through the scheming of central bankers.
CBDCs are dead in the water, and we will ensure they remain so.
Everything the oppressors do is to push through, firstly, Digital ID, and secondly, Digital Money.
Their intention is to link the COVID Digital Pass to a Digital ID and then to a Digital Currency (CBDC).
This will give central bankers absolute control over who holds a unit of currency.
And in order to hold that unit of currency, you must adhere to their rules and regulations.
Example:
Have you injected yourself with the toxic spike protein x times?
What is your CO2 emission?
What is your social credit score?
And so on.
Here is Agustin Carstens, the BIS general manager on CBDC:
https://odysee.com/@NoNewAbnormal:4/BkelcUZeOIBkbiXK:7
Quote:
‘With the CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability (he means a unit of digital currency), and also we will have the technology to enforce that’
https://corbettreport.substack.com/p/the-global-uprising-against-cbdcs
WEF’s Eswar Prasad from the FT
Central banks must not be blind to the threats posed by CBDCshttps://archive.is/0ZHDH
To the author:
You write “…which would in turn need the support of the public plus the build-out of a very significant piece of national IT infrastructure, capable of sustaining at least 30,000 transactions per second and once launched could never be switched off.”
This exists already. It is the BSV BLOCKCHAIN.
You continue: “…and blockchains get nowhere near that transactional throughput.”
Yes they can. But the only one which does it is the BSV BLOCKCHAIN. It’s the only Blockchain which implements Satoshi Nakamoto’s (Dr Craig Wright’s) original Bitcoin protocol. (BTC was stolen/centralised in 2018 by Blockstream when they took the chain of signatures off the BTC Blockchain).
You REALLY need to do your homework, author.
I know more than you. But I know I don’t know enough. Not enough to think I can write articles for Daily Sceptic on these matters.
Blockchain technology is a dance with the devil. If Blockchain can be a force for good or bad remains to be seen. I hope for the former.
Downvoter, come on. Pay your fiver, get explainin’
Many will remember when objectionable regulations from Brussels were rumoured to be imminent. Politicians, especially the Tories, dismissed the rumours. When they were found to be real the same people told us they would never happen. When they were formulated the Tories would stop it.
then it happened. Tories went quiet. When challenged they claimed it might be a good idea. Then we found the regulations oppressive and expensive; they sucked.
ah, said Tories, they were only a flea bite not to be repeated.
m when we come to roll back EU laws these flea bites are so enmeshed tge politicians have not removed them after seven years and counting.
Digital currencies seem to me the same. These is public demand but they want to impose it on us. That cannot herald goodness and freedom for us.
“It is different in China, but we do not live there.” Naive, where have you been for three years? What drove our own and other western governments to abandon their pandemic emergency plans and implement lockdowns? It wouldn’t be China would it?
I am really starting to wonder if the DS is getting paid to print articles which to me seem to come from an outright shill.
Current developments add no benefit to what we already have other than to solidify power and money in the hands of a very few, it’s as simple as that. Whether it is intentional (imo, yes), whether it’s because there are people who live for change for change’s sake, regardless of benefit, is irrelevant. None of this is making the world a better place, far from it. For someone to so ardently plead how necessary it is to take away independence and freedom from the bulk of the population, all the while saying how we should all step forward for a nice, refreshing shower after our long train ride – what is the DS thinking? I have no problem hearing the opposite side, always necessary, but this pathetic government shilling is 99% of currents msm, why perpetuate the propaganda here?
Is the “Anonymous Daily Sceptic’s IT Reporter” Ian Rons?
I disagree with these articles so much it must be him.
It does read like him.
The writer does not understand that the government will be paying out all benefits in CBDC’s. His percentage theory is just nuts.
Government: If you want to get your benefits you will have to sign up to a new national database. You will then get a CBDC card that you can use to spend your benefits.
Also Government: Shops if you want to have people spend their benefits in your shop or supermarket, you have to use have it linked to the actual items they are buying just like you do with your loyalty cards.
Is this willful ignorance on behalf of the writer?
Anonymous IT Reporter July article:
And as we have seen recently with banks or the censorious payment processors or social media platforms, we should not trust them either. In fact, trust nobody but yourself.
Anonymous IT Reporter August article:
As much processing as possible, including identity management, will be delegated to PIPs, i.e., the banks and card providers that you already trust to process your transactions.
Not sure “someone who rescues these kinds of projects for a living” can be considered a disinterested commentator. Especially when they suggest that legislation is only enacted with public consent, that our brave principled MPs will somehow protect us and that we have “little to fear”. That “little” is plenty for me, thanks; and no, I don’t resent holding on to my utility bill.
If the possibility of CBDCs is a long way off, that doesn’t make things any safer: it gives governments and their rogue ‘independent’ central banks plenty of time to perfect the technology. What needs to happen is for society to say no now! All development of CBDCs should stop immediately, any further development made illegal, and CBDCs never be contemplated again.
I have sufficient background knowledge to understand this article so feel able to comment.
There are a few forms of money including:
– Paper cash and coins – directly money
– Electronic cash – same as above but in electronic form.
– Deposits – your bank account
Deposits are ‘vouchers for cash’. Banks do not have enough actual cash to back these vouchers (it’s mostly backed by loans on the bank’s balance sheet) should they all be redeemed at once. Hence bank runs. I recommend this article for more background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-reserve_banking
When you pay for goods using your debit card, all that happens is that deposits get shuffled around. No cash is involved. Say if you buy a good from a shop that uses HSBC, paid for with a card issued by HSBC then there is no movement in cash.
There are two potential reasons I can think of for CBDCs:
– Replace paper cash and coins.
– Electronic banking for those without access to bank accounts
But these could already be simply accomplished by anonymous pre-paid cards (e.g. like an Oyster card or Amazon voucher). If the government really cared about these two “problems”, they could encourage banks to develop a universal pre-paid cash card. That would be anonymous, like paper cash is, so from the government’s point of view undesirable. Why don’t they? I think we know the answer.
My conclusion is that this is a two pronged “attack”. CBDC will provide the infrastructure for payments. But what will really give it power over us is if each CBDC account is linked to our brand new ID numbers – there won’t be any need for these KYC checking intermediaries that the article mentions. All the information that is required will be linked to the ID numbers. Your transaction history WILL BECOME your financial identity. You buy a pack of cigarette with your CBDC money – watch your health insurance premium automatically go up next time you renew. Decline the Covid jab (and for such things, proof of having obtained them can be granted through nominal micro payments, e.g. the ledge will show that you spent 1 pence paying for your Covid jab) – be unable to buy a ticket to travel on a train, or to go to a concert.
With the current system that we have the cost of control is still hard enough for the government and its various proxies (banks etc.,) to heave a sigh and give up in many cases. That won’t be the case with ID backed CBDCs. Monitoring will be complete.
Personally, I favour 100% privacy and anonymity in payments – it’s unfortunate if cash payments are made to facilitate criminal activities that even we here might disapprove of (such as buying Bud Light), but voluntary payments are necessarily outside of the public sphere, so should be of no interest to the government. Payments in themselves are morally neutral. Crimes conducted in the public sphere (e.g. Bud Light drinking on a park bench) can be policed in the public sphere using traditional methods.
Informative and bloody funny. Thanks
”That money is created by commercial banks when they create loans. Quick economics lesson: loans create both an asset for the bank and a liability for the borrower…”
Well that’s a bit confusing because the term ‘commercial bank’ is in the first sentence and ‘bank’ are used in the second. Do both sentences refer to the same type of bank?
Normally a loan is made based on deposits. When someone deposits cash, they become a creditor to the bank, the bank becomes a debtor. A debt is not an asset.
When the bank lends that deposit, they become a creditor to the borrower and the borrower becomes the bank’s debtor. The loan cannot be an asset as it is a debt against the bank to the depositor. In fact the relationship is between the depositor and the borrower, the bank is just the middle-man.
In the event of a commercial bank ‘creating a loan’, that is, not based on deposits, it does not create a debt and the money doesn’t exist in the economy until the loan is repaid. Where does that money to repay come from… real money in the economy already so the two cancel out. The money in the economy is not increased.
When Government creates money via Bank of England, unlike commercial banks they create a debt, which makes money an IOU – which is why bank notes say… ‘Promises to pay the bearer’. This does increase money in the economy.
No, taking out a mortgage doesn’t require the bank to depend on their existing deposits.
On completion, the amount lent is placed on their balance sheet alongside the borrowers liability.
The money is literally created at that moment.
https://renegadeinc.com/the-great-british-mortgage-swindle/
I said based, not dependent, it is fractional reserve banking. They also borrow on the money market or from each other banks.
If you want a loan in cash, where does the money come from?
If you receive the loan as a cheque, you pay the cheque into your bank, the cheque is cleared and funds transferred from the lender bank to your bank. Where does the money come from?
If the lender makes an electronic transfer to your bank, your bank has to receive cleared funds before they make money available to you. Where does the money come from?
At a particular time in the day, all books must balance in and between all banks.
There must be enough money within the system to meet all liabilities.
In fractional reserve banking, banks have to hold enough cash in reserve to ensure they can meet anticipated demands to settle with their debtors. If not they borrow from other banks, or BoE as lender of last resort.
Why should the author claim anonymity? This goes against the ethos of free speech unless there is a specific reason that he/she cannot be named.
“The problem is that Visa, Mastercard or whichever card schemes you and the merchant use to process your payment do not know what you have purchased. They do not know because they do not need to know. As far as payment is concerned, what you bought is irrelevant. “
Could you therefore explain why these payment systems have refused transaction connected with certain products, websites, organisations, if they don’t know/don’t care what transactions are taking place and, if they don’t know what transactions take place, how do they manage to print details of each transaction on credit card statements?
The merchant has itemised details in any transaction linked to a credit card payment, the payment system has the merchant details, date, time, amount of the transaction – it is a very simple matter to connect the two.
The real question about CBDC is if, as you point out, it is a poor competitor to what exists and does nothing more, why the enthusiasm for it?
The answer must be it is a precursor for something else. Get us used to it, extend its reach… then Gotcha!
Remember how it was sworn on a stack of Bibles reaching the moon, that legislation permitting public surveillance cameras would ONLY be used to monitor criminal activity? Then one day it was being used to prosecute dog owners for letting their dog foul the street, and now Congestion Charging, ULEZ. More to follow, doubtless.
So, if I’ve got this right.
CBDC are good. However, if it turns out that they are not good, it isn’t by the design of authoratarian influencers, but simple a cock-up by well meaning people who couldn’t run a knees up in a brewery.
Comforting to know…
Like 5G, CBDCs are not primarily consumer products, though they can be used that way.
CBDCs allow instantaneous trade settlements to be carried out in milliseconds.
Thailand, my adopted country, has been using them that way in its trade with China and UAE since 2021. We pay Baht for our UAE oil, and our UAE counterparts receives payment in dirhams, almost instantaneously.
Next month mBridge, the global CBDC exchange, will open to all comers from its gleaming new HQ in Hong Kong and the dollar’s use in trade settlements – along with massive exchange costs and CIA monitoring – will quietly die and Hong Kong will boom.
https://herecomeschina.substack.com/p/reconsider-hong-kong
”It would require new legislation for a start, which would in turn need the support of the public”
“the BoE and HM Treasury are going to struggle to get the support they need from MPs to pass the necessary legislation for another generation”.
Hmm. Can anyone think of any unpopular legislation which was introduced during the last 3 years? Maybe even not requiring a parliamentary vote, rather done with statutory instruments or ‘emergency powers’? Even if proper democratic procedures are followed, my MP, sitting in a safe seat is a rubber stamper, and always votes for whatever the government proposes.
Remember the covid “lockdowns”, which despite a wealth of evidence showing them to have manifold net harms, are seemingly still on the table for future use? What a great enforcement tool it would be for future restrictions on our human rights and civil liberties if our programmable money would only work within a certain radius of our home…
And is it impossible that the fiat currency system is heading for a meltdown that will make the introduction of CBDCs a national emergency?
An excellent and very informative article, thank you.
As a total economics greenhorn (to put it mildly) I did my best to grasp the technicalities of this piece. I largely failed, of course, but enough mud has been thrown at the stable door for some of it to stick. Overall initial impression: little to fear. However, from small acorns… The point is that experts like ‘Anonymous IT Reporter’ always take refuge in what they believe they know – and, granted, much of what they know will be well-founded and reassuring. But what others are seeing behind all the technicalites is the oak tree that has been quietly growing in the background, and, well…I’m with them.
On a slightly different, but related question, I get irritated by the increasing habit of article writers of using James Delingpole as a standard metaphor for what they see as unwarrantable exaggeration (ie, mad conspiracy theorising), when delivering their own often contestable opinions. It’s as if they resent him for beating them to it. This is from ‘Anonymous IT Reporter’: “The upshot of all this is that the deeper you go into the U.K. CBDC system the less personal data you will find. How a curb-your-petrol-enthusiasm scheme is meant to work in that environment is very far from clear. Perhaps James Delingpole or one of his guests can enlighten us. He did have a guest who claimed to have a blockchain that did a trillion transactions per second. But I digress…” Pompous and patronising? I think so. James D gets excited now and then, but he is the absolute symbol of what this site is all about: scepticism. Everything, but everything, must be viewed with a jaundiced eye – because human beings are flawed creatures and transparent honesty is a rare quality. I’m with the sceptics who don’t trust experts on CBDCs and I’m with James Delingpole and his principle of Total Distrust & Mistrust. There’s probably a German word for it.
Well said re James D!
Thanks for the article. Very informative. As you say scepticism shouldn’t just be contrarianism (spelling?!).
The ‘Digital Britcoin’ is an ongoing Accenture / Bank of England project.
The ‘mothballed’ Covid vaccine pass is the digital ID that underpins the technology.
The Death Star is far nearer than we think!
The government is rubbish at IT projects so they’ll never get it off the ground. That’s a reasonable point for sure.
But as to the rest: in my understanding (maybe wrong), a Bank of England CBDC would NOT be Sterling. It would run alongside Sterling.
Sterling is mostly, as the author said, issued by commercial banks. A CBDC would be issued solely by the Bank of England. Therefore they would control the money supply directly. That’s why they want it.
Furthermore, it is entirely possible for CBDC’s to be made “programmable” – for example, to cancel if they were not spent within a defined period, or to be cancelable if the holder was a “persona non grata” (not enough social credit points).
A CBDC would also have a central database of all transactions, that would be viewable by the Bank/government.
Surely that’s enough to worry about without considering whether the government could stop you buying certain products.