Under President Joe Biden’s watch, the White House and the Federal Reserve are laying the foundation for a programmable, trackable, and easily manipulated digital currency that could drastically alter life in America. In March 2022, the Biden administration issued an executive order directing various federal agencies to scrutinize digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, and explore the potential development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
A CBDC would be an entirely new digital currency rather than a digital version of the existing paper-based dollar. In September 2022, the White House revealed the completion of CBDC reports and announced the development of “policy objectives” for a U.S. CBDC system. Biden instructed several top government bodies to collaborate with the Federal Reserve to further design a potential CBDC.
The Biden administration and the Federal Reserve have been diligently working on the creation of a CBDC, envisioning a programmable, traceable currency aimed at promoting left-wing social goals such as financial inclusion, equity, and environmental justice. Unlike decentralized cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, every CBDC transaction could be easily traced to individual users by financial institutions, government agents, or the Federal Reserve.
Moreover, a CBDC would be programmable, allowing rules to be imposed that limit spending on approved activities. Most CBDC designs discussed by the Biden administration and the Federal Reserve would strictly limit ownership of CBDC money, only permitting large institutions such as banks, the federal government, and the Federal Reserve to own CBDCs. This means that in Biden’s future, you will not own CBDC money, and you’ll have no privacy either.
In our current banking system, when you deposit money into an account, the cash becomes the property of the bank. However, privacy laws prevent banks from disclosing your financial information to third parties, including the government, in many cases. On the other hand, CBDCs would exist only in digital form in a deposit account and would be programmed to provide data to the government. Consequently, there would be no way to physically withdraw CBDCs from a depository account, own them directly, or use them without being monitored by a large institution. “In other words, there’s no scenario in which you would be able to store your digital money in a local hard drive or private storage account. All of your money would be kept by a bank or the Federal Reserve directly, which means they would own all of your CBDC money.”
If a programmable CBDC is launched soon, you won’t own money and will have very little privacy, if any. While this is good news for big government advocates and those desiring more power for large financial institutions, it could result in a devastating loss of freedom for the rest of us.
