Nigeria bans ATM cash withdrawals over $225 a week to force use of CBDC (opens in new tab)

> there are infinite applications on the spectrum of good and evil.

Which means it should be firmly in the hands of the people and never in those of a centralized government, in particular, never one which collects taxes directly from the people.

> If we are going to allow programmable money, we must allow competitors (e.g. citystate crypto, nationstate crypto, non-CB crypto) and incumbent payments like cash.

Well.. precisely. At this point, though.. what incentive to the population is there for a central government "programmable" token of value?

The only use I can imagine for programmable money is restrictions in the allowed transactions, or alternatively increase surveillance.

I can't see any non-authoritarian uses for it. Are there any good uses don't require a benevolent dictator?

> If we are going to allow programmable money, we must allow competitors

The 'must' in the second part is more of something that you'd like governments to do, but not something that they in any way 'have' to do. I see vanishingly small chance of any government ever doing so because it would defeat the entire purpose of the central in CBDC.

I am reminded of an episode of the 1995 TV show sliders, where people can withdraw unlimited cash from ATMs but it puts them in the draw for population control measures. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0702744/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_...

You are like a somatic cell to states. Your well-being isn't a concern, only your usefulness.

>After a while, businesses will simply stop accepting cash.

So when you loose you smartphone/cards you cant buy another one, open your car, pay for a taxi or even sleep in a hotel because there is no chance to go home?

Switzerland had 3 complete blackouts (1-2 month ago) for paying digital. So the sellers had to make list (and hope you come back later to pay it.). If your country just accept digital, you trust fully on digital infrastructure...i think we all know what a good idea that is.

I don't hear people saying cash protects freedom, but is does protect privacy. Can it be taken away, yes of course, if people don't care about privacy (and most don't) and don't use it then it can, and that seems to be a project in progress.

The inconvenience of "my piles of money will no longer be legal tender in five years" and "all of my money is locked in accounts I cannot access starting immediately" are in entirely different categories.

I experienced this directly, when the electronic payment system recently collapsed in my part of Canada for ~2 days. I fortunately had a small amount of cash on me. Without it, I would have been unable to buy lunch, top-up my nearly expired phone plan, and then buy a train ticket and go about my normal day. It was also fortunate for my friend, who I lent $20. Can't take cash out at the ATM either obviously. I would have been stuck at home all day. I wouldn't have been able to give a small amount of money to my friend. Being able to lock people out of their bank accounts is far more specific, and disabling, than regulations on cash could be.

Some businesses are already going cashless (here in Finland, have understood it is also happening on Sweden).

As most people anyways pay card/phone/app, it’s not worth of trouble to deal with cash. Handling cash gives you security problems (robberies) and adds costs (need to regularly take money to bank).

I am pushing 50 and the idea of America becoming cashless in my lifetime is not going to happen.

There is no way our law makers are going to want to lose access to cash. No one wants to get a bribe or conduct a shady deal in a highly traceable digital currency in the US.

Not to mention, we can't even get rid of 100% utterly useless pennies. They are basically a form of government printed litter that I am not sure is even worth a homeless person's time to be bothered with.

If the government or banks impose fees on getting cash, the cost of using cash relatively to digital transactions increases doesn't it?

And the rest (USA, EU) will follow, with a lot of propaganda saying that it's a good thing.

Because, of course, money is laundered $250 at a time.

You serious?

ESMAP have a good guide for this: https://esmap.org/mtf_multi-tier_framework_for_energy_access

https://mtfenergyaccess.esmap.org/

Might not help in this case but it’s a nice frame work for thinking about energy access.

By introducing a CBDC, the Nigerian government hopes to attract revenues that come from remittances, which have mostly shifted to crypto channels because of poor international trade policies. Today, getting USD liquidity as an importer/exporter is challenging, as there are two market rates - one for banks & few institutions, the other for individuals & the vast majority of the economy. To find competitive rates, people resort to P2P markets. Furthermore, the Nigerian government banned licensed money operators from transacting with any crypto entity - essentially shutting down revenues from fiat deposits. Restrictions like withdrawal limits on USD accounts ($10k per month) makes it highly unfavorable for such high-volume merchants to transact in USD via the banking system. A CBDC is a way of the Nigerian government looking at all that activity with the hopes to attract the revenues that flow within crypto, but they miss the fundamental step of favorable trade & monetary policies that increase USD liquidity and opens up crypto officially to capture remittance revenues.

P.S: I’m a Nigerian living in Nigeria

The government is just looking for a way to save face for their failed economic policies. They’re setting up this law in a country where digital banking is unreliable; it’s not uncommon for bank networks go down for hours.

Because of how reckless they’ve managed our economy, banks are finding it difficult to access foreign exchange. One consequence is that I can no longer spend the equivalent of more than $20 per month from my local debit card on payments, so I have to resort to using cryptocurrency to pay for my websites and domain names…this is a horrible law set by a clueless government that just wants more control over citizens but won’t fix simple things like electricity and roads.

You realize 20% of Nigeria is 40 million people?

I think the policy is outrageous, but that doesn't make the title correct.

Also, 5% is not really significantly more than the typical fee an ATM already charges.

What makes you think you own money on your bank account?

We still have cash right now - that is the important distinction. You can choose to put your cash under your mattress, self custody has always been a thing.

Our bank accounts have some legislated protections and even if they decide to de-platform me from my bank account they have to provide me with the money (sanctions aside) in that bank account in the form of cash or a medium that can be exchanged for cash.

If cash ceases to exist then what? If the government decides that I (or a group) are to be blocked from transacting, without cash then what happens?

We currently have choice - CBDCs will remove that choice for everyone and unilaterally grant governments an absurd amount of power - as demonstrated in that thread

you compare pear and apples. CBDC is to be compared with your current saving account, whereas a debit card is how you can spend the money from that account, whether it's a saving account or a CBDC. Likely debit cards will still exist with CBDC, assuming not everyone has a smartphone.

The "advantages" of CBDC, in regard to governments, is that this is a sort of entry in a database, possibly every dollar having an "id", perfect for tracking. They will know what you bought, when, etc. Also, governments could delete that entry to remove dollar from your account. They also could simply lock that account since the CB/government issue this currency as it's not controlled anymore by your local bank. In a sense, governments already have some of these capabilities, but it's a lot of procedures to access and block the money (remember the Canadian truckers?). And at the moment, it's even harder to track the flow of money in the current system. CBDC is going to make such control much easier and faster.

The most significant thing about a CBDC that it's a liability on the government or the central bank in this case. It's a legal tender while a checking or savings account isn't

There is no such thing as "collective freedom".

Use of one bank's credit card is voluntary and not mandated by the central authority. It's the difference between choosing to only read the New York Times or a government enforcement of one source of news

> India's approach was to cancel large-denomination banknotes, but it did not have the intended effect

The objective was not to cancel large-denomination banknotes, given that even larger notes were issued in their place (2000 Rupee notes). The printing of those notes were well underway when "demonetization" was announced. The goal was to understand how much cash remained in the system, and to move away from a cash-based economy.

Just as most government programs, results are mixed. It seemed more of a failure immediately afterward, but with 6 years of hindsight doesn't seem as bad. It kicked off India's digital economy, with UPI digital payments finding mass acceptance. UPI payments went from $1.5B in October 2016, to $10B the following month. This triggered mass adoption of phone payment apps, and the transaction value stands at $140+ billion per month as of today. In most tier-1 and tier-2 cities in India, you don't need cash or a credit card to survive.

As far as tax evasion is concerned, while it wasn't any sort of total success it did pave the way for more transactions to flow through monitored digital channels. Today banks don't accept any significant amount as cash deposits and there are strict caps on annual cash transactions. Overall, the "demonetization" event of Nov 2016 was imho a success as far as the government's objectives were concerned.

As a private citizen however, I don't particularly like the privacy problems that tag along with this.

It's possible CBDC's will only be launched in certain countries. I'm hoping at least America will embrace crypto instead of pushing it offshore (and of course also figure out the regulatory aspects to reduce/eliminate the bad actors in the space). Time will tell.

Eventually we will get to LPI/LPD mesh networks as a requirement to run zk-based cryptos. Unless we self-host at the PHY layer with software radios, they will tighten the screws until we are all enslaved.

Half of Russia isn't muslim though.

I've listened to Corbett for some time and used to watch his videos prior to being silenced on several platforms. He does present himself in a manor that sounds like a conspiracy theorist which is unfortunate because he is actually one of the few decent investigative journalists that remain on the internet. I suspect he presents himself that way because it draws a bigger audience or perhaps it's just his personality. Either way, I appreciate that he does not ask permission from the Trusted News Initiative to speak.

I think this would be an interesting topic in and of itself. Why do investigative journalists that cover taboo or fringe topics end up sounding the way they do? Is it a reaction to the frustration of being silenced? Is it a quirk of a particular personality type? Or maybe it's me? Maybe I am so used to listening to corporate media that anyone who deviates from their presentation style just sounds a bit off?

Maybe listen and draw your own conclusions? In this episode he uses fringe sources like the American Bankers Association. He does cover conspiracies, but some conspiracies are actually true. This appears to be one of them.

His channel was removed from social media for questioning the ever changing and largely incoherent COVID narrative. [0] [1]

But if you or anyone else finds a more comprehensive resource, please share.

[0]: https://www.corbettreport.com/mission-accomplished-the-corbe... [1]: https://www.corbettreport.com/sciencesays/

Its enough for me to look at the "r/Wallstreetsilver" guys and think maybe they're onto something

bunch of nutters.

I assume the person you are replying to is referring to the government freezing the bank accounts of people who contributed to the trucker protests. Though it should be noted that this was done through existing bank infrastructure. CBDC would give governments much more granularity in controlling how people use their money.

My interest in Bitcoin (since 2014) has never been because I thought it was private. My interest is because of its potential to transform the financial system. I actually think the public auditability of Bitcoin is one of its strengths as a technology.