The unelected leaders of the EU are accelerating the people who live within their jurisdiction towards a digital age of control. The Digital Euro (DE) has been championed by Christine Lagarde, the current President of the European Central Bank since 2019, and is being pushed to go live by October 2025.
The DE is effectively a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Essentially it would work the way most people currently use a debit or credit card or payment application on a smart phone.
The difference is in the way the DE will be issued and the end users’ ability to spend their own hard-earned currency.
“Complete control” – the stuff of “dystopian nightmares”
The CBDC is the ultimate in complete control when it comes to dystopian nightmares and, it could be argued, is the natural progression of how the government and central bankers will be able to control societies.
Over time, gold and silver have been replaced by paper fiat currency, which although it allows for private financial transactions to take place, has been manipulated and inflated to eye-watering levels – inflation being an insidious stealth tax no matter how the government tries to spin it.
Next level Big Brother
Credit and debit cards can be blocked and tracked which to some extent has taken privacy away. But with the CBDC, programmable currency can now be employed to work however its issuer deems fit as it is fully controlled, surveilled and able to be linked to a digital identity.
Digital currency can be used to digitally score you
For example: On Monday you buy a steak for dinner with your digital currency. The AI that runs the Digital Euro will record this against your digital social score/carbon footprint.
Fancy another steak that week? You’ll find you’re unable to purchase it as the DE is programmed to only allow a certain amount of what Lagarde and her friends think is good for you and / or the planet.
And so it continues, think further afield than steak. Consider fuel, travel tickets, entertainment, education, transacting with companies/people who don’t have a good social score. All of it could mean your social currency is punitively downgraded or even switched off.
Get informed
The financial system is changing quickly. Soon the end user will eventually have very little freedom to use currency in a self-determined, free way. The CBDC is currently being developed in 134 countries representing 98% of global GDP. Nineteen out of the G20 countries are in advanced stages of development and introduction, similar to the EU.
If you’re blissfully unaware of this, get informed – and act accordingly.
DISCLAIMER: This piece is the opinion of this columnist and should in no way be considered impartial investment advice.
