Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) have received a lot of attention in recent weeks, in both the alternative and corporate media, as pushback against them mounts.
We reported last year that credit union and banking trade groups released a joint letter to the chair and ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, warning of “devastating consequences” if the Federal Reserve moves forward with a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
Even the Wall Street Journal recently published an opinion piece warning against the implementation of CBDCs.
China is further ahead than the U.S. in rolling out their Central Bank Digital Yuan, but they have had such a hard time getting people to use it, that they started giving it away during the recent Lunar New Year celebrations.
Replacing a monetary system and convincing businesses and consumers to stop doing business and stop using cash, is not something that is going to be adopted overnight, and as we can see, there is going to be major pushback against this.
However, the goal of a digitized society that requires a digital ID to participate in society and allows the government to pretty much track everything you do, can most certainly be accomplished without the full implementation of CBDCs, and in fact it is already happening in one country: Ukraine.
Ukraine rolled out their digital ID and digital transformation program in 2014, which then kicked into high gear in 2020 when COVID was unleashed, and is now almost complete thanks to the war, and help from Elon Musk who provided satellites to connect all the Ukriane people to the Internet and the adoption of the Diia app.
So while everyone has been worried about CBDCs and their loss of privacy in such an economic system, Ukraine has already developed a digital transformation of society that is now the example worldwide of how a government can track all of its citizens, even without a CBDC.
About 9 years in development now, Ukraine is probably the model country on how to make a complete digital transformation of society. It is powered by American Big Tech companies, with Google services now providing the country's infrastructure.
Zelenskyy even wants to hold the next elections via the app. What could go wrong?