The World Economic Forum is introducing the next step. The programmable CBDC is soon going to be reality.
According to the Dutch National Bank:
"The digital euro is a central bank digital currency (CBDC). This is digital money issued by a central bank to the general public. Now, central banks only issue digital central bank money to banks with a central bank account. However, certain central banks such as De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) are working with the European Central Bank (ECB) to explore the possibility of granting wider public access to digital central bank money."
Christine Lagarde released a video statement on November the 7th that can be seen here:
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2022/html/ecb.sp221107~dcc0cd8ed9.en.html
It should be clear that in the long term the CBDC is superior from the point of view of counterparty risk to storing the current money with commercial banks. If counterparty risk continues to prevail in companies and individuals (as it seems to be now), then CBDC will slowly but surely phase out commercial banks and current money.
Unfortunately most companies and individuals (including economists and journalists) turn out to be blind to the dangers of CBDC: replacing cash. A danger that already exists, incidentally, because more and more people no longer use cash and choose the convenience of paying by card or bank transfer. But if the consumer wants it, then in most cases it is still possible to pay with cash (although this is increasingly restricted by governments). However, a CBDC has no cash and so if CBDC were to replace the current money system, this would by definition mean the end of cash money.
Ofcourse all of this has been decided without any input from the population, and it's causing protests all over Europe. Below you'll find a video of the latest protest in The Hague, The Netherlands.
Watch:
Sources:
https://www.dnb.nl/en/innovations-in-payments-and-banking/digital-euro-what-why-and-how/
https://www.ecb.europa.eu