The CBDC Cometh and Its A Flop (Part 2)

“We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”

Augustín Carstens, GM of the Bank of International Settlements

After an orchestrated cash shortage that started with the central bank restricting withdrawals to the equivalent of $225 per week for individuals, followed by an abrupt end to the old paper Naira, as the Nigerian govt choose to “redesign” paper notes at the same time, the working poor majority of Nigeria were left in the cold with no means of conducting business except by barter and trade. The failed CBDC experiment in Nigeria demonstrated to the world that its advertised “inclusivity” of the unbanked actually excludes the unbanked poor of the third world and a lack of critical infrastructure wasn’t the only problem. Only 0.5% of Nigerians adopted eNairia a year after it was launched; the number of people neither able nor willing to use Nigeria’s CBDC included most of the middle class who have access to SMART phones, electricity, and even internet access in their households.

Even in the first world, CBDCs are hardly a hot seller. A CATO institute opinion survey found that twice as many Americans oppose implementing a CBDC (34%) as favor it (16%) with roughly half not even knowing WTF it is. Unfortunately, support for the idea tends to decrease with age, with a small minority of 18-29 year olds supporting its implementation (32%). However, a clear majority (76%) of Americans are more concerned with the potential risks to privacy and autonomy than the supposed benefits of reducing crimes like money laundering and embezzlement (24%) including a majority of both Democrats (68%) and Republicans (85%) and zoomers between 18-29 years of age (60%). Last year, during a solicitation for public comments on the FED’s presentation on a US CBDC in The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation, 72% of the 2,000+ comments expressed contempt and apprehension about the adoption of the CBDC while the positive comments came from businesses trying to secure contracts or who have active contracts with the FED. Despite its unpopularity among electorates, CBDCs are unlikely to ever be put to a vote. The Davos clique have made it clear that their ideology, which they call “stakeholder” capitalism, is inherently anti-democratic in its objective to confine national governments to ‘one voice among many without always being the final arbiter”; unelected UN bureaucrats, billionaires, multinational corporations, and trade associations are the other voices.