134 countries (98% of global GDP) are developing CBDCs that would give central banks unprecedented visibility into every financial transaction. China's digital yuan already feeds data into its social credit system -- by 2019, over 26 million air ticket purchases were blocked for 'untrustworthy' citizens. CBDCs could impose restrictions on purchases, set expiration dates on currency, apply personalized inflation rates, or freeze accounts instantly. Multiple U.S. senators have introduced legislation to ban a CBDC in America.
“Central Bank Digital Currencies are not about modernizing payments -- they are a surveillance and control tool that would give governments the ability to program what you can buy, set expiration dates on your money, and freeze your accounts without due process.”
From “crazy” to confirmed
The Claim Is Made
This is the moment they called it crazy.
When central banks began discussing digital currencies in earnest around 2015, critics raised a straightforward concern: what if governments could see every purchase you make, and more importantly, what if they could stop you from making it?
The dismissal was swift and patronizing. Financial regulators and mainstream economists called it conspiracy thinking—the paranoid fantasy of libertarians and cryptocurrency advocates who simply didn't understand monetary policy. A CBDC, they insisted, would be just like cash, only digital. More efficient. More secure. No hidden agenda. Move along.
But something happened in the years between the dismissal and now that demands we revisit what was actually being claimed.
Today, 134 countries representing 98 percent of global GDP are actively developing CBDCs. These aren't theoretical exercises. The European Central Bank, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England—every major financial institution on earth is building the infrastructure for programmable money. And the functionality critics warned about isn't speculation anymore; it's documented feature creep.
China's digital yuan, launched in 2020, already connects to its social credit system. By 2019, before the yuan was even operational, Beijing had blocked over 26 million air ticket purchases for citizens deemed "untrustworthy." A CBDC doesn't create the desire for this kind of control—it simply makes it technically effortless. No more court orders. No more delays. Instant.
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The programmability angle, once dismissed as science fiction, is now openly discussed in central bank white papers. A CBDC could theoretically expire currency to force spending and prevent savings. It could apply different inflation rates to different citizens based on criteria decided by bureaucrats. It could restrict what you're permitted to purchase—not through law, but through the code governing your money itself. That's not theory. That's the stated capability of the technology.
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act in 2023. Senator Rand Paul did the same. These aren't fringe figures proposing bans on imaginary threats. They're responding to something real enough to require legislative action. The fact that such bills exist is itself evidence that the concern transcended conspiracy circles and reached people with access to classified briefings.
The Cato Institute and the Federalist Society—hardly radical organizations—have published detailed analyses explaining exactly how CBDCs could enable the kind of financial control that was once dismissed as paranoia. They're not claiming it will happen. They're documenting that it could, and that preventing it requires intentional policy choices, not technological inevitability.
This matters because it reveals something about how institutional dismissal works. When experts say "that's not possible," they often mean "that's not intended." The gap between those two statements is where reality lives. CBDCs could absolutely enable the surveillance and control critics warned about. Whether they will depends entirely on political choices yet to be made.
The original claim wasn't wrong. It was just premature. And when something dismissed as impossible becomes technically inevitable, the burden shifts. We're no longer debating whether it's possible to program money. We're deciding whether we should.
Beat the odds
This had a 0.1% chance of leaking — someone talked anyway.
Conspirators
~50Network
Secret kept
5.3 years
Time to 95% exposure
500+ years
