According to Cointelegraph, Dan Held, a former Kraken growth lead, and Natalie Smolenski, Ph.D., executive director of the Texas Bitcoin Foundation, argued that CBDCs would deprive the general public of financial power.
According to Cointelegraph, the US think tank Bitcoin Policy Institute has advised the United States of America to disregard Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) in favor of Bitcoin (BTC) and stablecoins as alternatives.
As noted by Cointelegraph, writers including Natalie Smolenski PhD, executive director, Texas Bitcoin Foundation, and former Kraken growth lead Dan Held argued that CBDCs will deprive the general public of financial autonomy, privacy, and freedom in a whitepaper that was recently posted. According to Smolenski and Held, CBDCs would be able to provide governments immediate access to any transaction made by a person from any location in the globe. They said that CBDCs would become instruments of financial censorship and control since they would enable governments to discourage or reverse transactions.
Smolenski and Held suggested focusing on surveillance to assist increase state awareness of all financial activities that aren’t monitored by the digital banking system based on information from Cointelegraph. Smolenski emphasized that while digital dollars and stablecoins would be subject to anti-money laundering and know-your-customer compliances, Bitcoin and private stablecoins will offer quick, inexpensive, digital transactions, both domestically and across borders.
The whitepaper’s insights pointed to a previous occurrence in which Dcash, an Eastern Caribbean Central Bank’s CBDC, went offline as evidence that governments apparently still lack familiarity with new technologies.
Additionally, Cointelegraph pointed out that CBDCs are anticipated to see expansion in nations like China. After ordering the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to submit a study analyzing 18 CBDC systems, US President Joe Biden earlier stated that the nation is anticipated to follow suit. The Bitcoin Policy Institute bills itself as an unbiased, nonprofit organization that conducts studies on the social and policy effects of Bitcoin and other developing payment networks.
