The above logo is apparently for the Center of Biblical Counseling and Discipleship.
Which is cool because that means it's a CBDC that actually exists. If you click the link they immediately try to charge you $40 to attend some seminar. Very godly of them to be sure. It's all very on-brand.
CBDCs are an interesting topic right now simply because people in crypto can't STFU about them. You know who's not talking about them? Literally everyone else. We can chalk this up to no-coiners being clueless or CBDCs being a huge nothing-burger. This expert knows CBDCs will go nowhere, as weird as it is to call myself an expert (especially considering how much weight the meaning of the word has lost over the last few years). 'Journeyman' maybe: the point is I know what I'm talking about within this field. I've done a lot of research and I can see the horizon quite clearly.
I'm on record as stating that CBDCs do not exist and will never exist. If you think CBDCs exist... then tell me how to buy some. I'd get some just for the novelty like when I bought 100 Ripple in 2018 only to sell everything I owned into Steem to defend the network in March 2020. These things happen. How lucky I am not to have lost everything in that fiasco, amirite? After all: we did technically lose that war. Or perhaps that was just a large battle. But I digress.
First off: CBDCs make no business sense.
Okay so once I have the CBDC... what can I actually do with it? What can I buy with it that I couldn't buy with crypto or fiat or another asset? The answer is: nothing. The only thing that CBDCs might be used for is UBI and a certain flavor of social credit score to bandaid the completely broken system we have going.
UBI
UBI makes sense within the context of CBDC for a couple of reasons. The main one being that money can't be printed out of thin air within the current debt-based system. This is something that people in crypto seem to willfully misunderstand (while no-coiners just have no idea what's going on whatsoever).
Central banks can only print reserves out of thin air. And a central bank, by definition, is a bank for banks. They do not have retail accounts; only "master-accounts" can use the FedNow system, which requires a banking license and is extremely on-brand typical banking stuff, even though everyone in crypto seems to think this is an onramp to CBDC. If anything, FedNow makes CBDC more difficult to exist, as the two paradigms are contradictory ([master] account based system vs [user] wallet based).
Social credit score
When combined with the current surveillance state, a social credit score combined with UBI makes the perfect match. Everyone knows you can't get something for nothing. If the government is going to be handing out "free" money then they're going to want obedience in return. This becomes extremely easy to enforce when so much data exists digitally and can be linked with facial recognition, social media presence, medical history, and whatever else.
So all of that makes sense, and yet CBDCs still do not make sense from a business model standpoint. Sure, maybe there's demand to get the UBI (in fact I guarantee there would be massive demand for free handouts), but who's actually footing the bill? Again, this is where most people fail to understand how a debt based economy works, so allow me to simplify the issue:
All debt must be backed by collateral.
And guess what? CBDCs have zero collateral. CBDCs are like the financial equivalent of begging the question in a courtroom. The lawyer (government) is trying to inject the answer to the problem within the problem itself. Yeah, that's unsurprisingly not going to work.
So yeah it makes sense that CBDCs would implement UBI to try and fix the technology problem, which is actually a power/distribution problem. Technology creates abundance. Abundance creates deflation (high supply low price) and deflation is very very bad for a debt-based economy that is absolutely dependent on growth, much like a drug-addict looking for their next hit.
Interestingly enough none of this would matter if the abundance created by technology wasn't heinously centralized. The biggest problem with technological abundance is that the tech is owned by some centralized agent who scoops up all the gain for themselves: leaving everyone else who got disrupted high and dry. Crypto fixes this, or if we are splitting hairs we'll say that it is possible for crypto to fix this, while it is impossible for CBDCs to perform a similar function.
Again: the problem is the collateral
And what is the collateral within a UBI CBDC system? PEOPLE. People are the collateral. And not just any people: it's the people who have lost their jobs because of self-driving cars, factory automation, the Internet, and AI. So basically the inventors of CBDC expect that the people they are bailing out are also going to be the ones propping up the system. Smart.
It's absurd on every level.
We've already seen what happens to every single crypto that tries to implement UBI: zero. Everyone within the system understands that free money is being airdropped on top of everyone. Everyone intrinsically subconsciously knows that they need to spend everything and hold zero value within a system such as that. This is what Bitcoiners are afraid of, and it's hilarious.
Oh no the Boogieman is gonna get me!
And what's the ultimate defense against the Boogieman? Well you better hide under your bedsheets, because I'm sure if the Boogieman was real then your magical bedsheets would save you from the monster. The parallel here is uncanny, as the environment required for a CBDC to actually work heavily implies that you've already perished in some kind of horrific global financial disaster.
In this future: CBDCs exist but crypto is illegal and all fiat has crashed to zero.
Okay so let me get this straight: all fiat currencies have crashed to zero, and in the wake of that devastation CBDCs have taken their place and we all live in a Dystopic UBI social credit score nightmare. Yeah well you skipped the middle part. You know, the part where we had to transition from where we are now to every fiat collapsing and all crypto being made illegal. How did you survive that transition? You literally didn't. Bitcoiners live in a fantasy land of thoughtlessness. Of course everyone already knows this but it's probably actually worse than we've ever considered, as crazy as that sounds. The rampant individualism and greed within the space would be hilariously ironic and hypocritical if it wasn't so disgusting.
What can give CBDCs value?
Okay so this is the extra funny part of the equation. Do you want to know why CBDCs are being pushed so hard? It's because the powers that be have finally capitulated (at least a big enough chunk that their interests are no longer aligned). Why do we think that Gary Gensler is out there claiming that everything but Bitcoin is a security? Why is Blackrock jumping into the game?
Because we won is why.
Bitcoin will be adopted by all banks, governments, and corporations within the next decade. That's why CBDCs are being pushed. Because if you know that eventually you'll have to adopt Bitcoin, then you need to make sure that your position is as big as possible. How does one accomplish this? We already know the answer, as it's been done hundreds of times already: build your own shitcoin and use it to buy Bitcoin.
So this idea that governments are going to make Bitcoin illegal (and not just Bitcoin but also everything that's not the CBDC) is absurd. It's simply not even possible within the current environment. Maybe we can circle back in ten years and revisit how the environment has changed, but for now it's an absurdist viewpoint.
Why would you ban Bitcoin if you hold Bitcoin?
Seriously make it make sense. Imagine you had a huge stack of Bitcoin. You want the value of your stack to go up. As the government, why would you ban other people from holding it? Again, just silly nonsensical logic of a worst-case-scenario that can never actually happen in reality. That doesn't serve anyone's interests.
And if I hear one more person talk about how the government confiscated everyone's gold I'm going to lose my shit. Gold and Bitcoin are not comparable. Stop trying to compare them. It's exponentially harder to confiscate, it exists digitally across borders, and there is no digital derivative of it that can manipulate its value because it's already digital. Imagine everyone's Bitcoin being confiscated but the price magically stayed propped up. Again: absurd. Let's talk again after it goes 100x, then maybe it would have the proper amount of liquidity for such things to even be possible.
The only thing that gives CBDCs value...
Is crypto (probably 99% Bitcoin) itself. People think that the government will ban Bitcoin to give value to the CBDC, but the CBDC only has value because of Bitcoin. Again, this entire debate is littered with contradictions and Catch-22s, just like the rest of the economy. The constant oversimplifications of both economics and politics leaves conspiracy theorists thinking that "anything is possible".
Yeah, well, it's not.
Both economists and politicians must thread the needle in a very particular way to get the desired result. These are mastered crafts that most people just chalk up to "meh anyone could do it". Yeah is that what you think when you watch professional sports? You could perform just as well? So many people think so until they step on the field and get annihilated. It's like some idiot thinking he can arm-wrestle a 500 pound bear and win. You can't, shut up: you look like an idiot. I don't give a shit how many pushups you can do; it's a fucking bear.
To recap:
- CBDCs have no value except for the value that Bitcoin gives it.
- It's foolish to expect that governments would be able to create a smooth a streamlined product that's more convenient and has less bugs than something a professional company has created.
- CBDCs are repackaged Enterprise Blockchain: the only difference being that everyone wrongfully assumes that governments will 'simply' ban everything else to give their own CBDC value.
- The entire value proposition of CBDC stems from this idea that everyone will be forced to use it, which makes no sense globally. A currency that's only used within national borders is a worthless currency.
- CBDCs have no collateral to back up their value. It's expected that people who use the CBDC will be the collateral, which is nonsense.
- The collateral of Bitcoin is trust in the immutable ledger.
Trust is an asset that is in quite short supply these days. - The timelines on CBDCs are such that multiple bull markets will occur before they even exist in any meaningful way. If CBDCs were actually a threat people would talk about them during bull runs, which isn't a thing. The entire conversation is rooted in delusion and a scarcity mindset.
- FedNow and CBDCs are incompatible rather than being precursors to each other.
Conclusion
It's hypocritical to say that CBDCs should not exist. Why? Because crypto is for everyone and it does not discriminate. To assume that the governments of the world wouldn't use a superior financial tool is ridiculous. Interestingly enough it's also hypocritical to actually use a CBDC because it's the opposite of everything we stand for.
How do we do mental gymnastics around this contradiction? Simply assume the gubment will force everyone to use their technology even though it's a painfully obvious conflict of interest. Even the dumbest and most brainwashed patriots could see past such a poorly constructed ruse; it will never happen that way. Guaranteed. Narrative matters. Also the government can't force people to use a particular technology because they're pretty much technologically incompetent Boomers who should have retired decades ago. There is no parallel between Bitcoin and gold, as the Gold 2.0 narrative is just as reductive and oversimplified as the CBDC narrative if not more-so.
The current CBDC alarmism is nonsensical and not rooted in reality. Is this delusion hurting the real movement? Hm, perhaps not. But it's also not healthy to be constantly living in fear of the Boogieman. We are on the verge of decentralization gaining a lot more power (DEX + WEB3). The Wild West of crypto isn't winding down, in fact it hasn't even come close to peaking. Control over these communities isn't increasing; imperialism is being disrupted to an even greater extent, which is exactly why the government crackdowns are becoming more and more overt and ridiculous. Expect the escalations to continue, but don't expect that governments can just magic themselves a victory with some law that nobody respects. History has proven otherwise countless times.
Money is power, and crypto is money. We are fighting this war across every front possible within an ecosystem of flat-architecture. Lawyers are being hired. Politicians are being bought. Hedge funds are being turned. Bottlenecks are being rerouted. This ugly transition has only just begun, but the writing is on the wall. The only constant is change. Bet on it.