australia is the scene of an implacable war against cash. The country of Oz is advancing at a forced march towards the CBDC and the deprivations of freedom that will ensue.
Australians weaned off cash
The number of bank branches has fallen by around 30% in Australia over the past five years. ATMs are disappearing even faster. They have fallen from a high of 14,000 in 2017 to around 6,000 last year.
As a result, cash transactions are on the verge of extinction. The Reserve Bank of Australia estimates that just 13% of transactions in 2022 were in cash.
However, the share of cash payments is higher if the black market is taken into account, which represents 10% of GDP in Australia. Cash therefore represents 20% of transactions. Moreover, the percentage would be higher if transactions over $1,000 were excluded.
But the fact is that the share of cash purchases has halved in just three years. This is one of the legacies of the Covid psychosis that the powerful have used to hasten the end of cash.
ANZ reduces access to cash
ANZ has just announced that some of its branches in the state of Victoria will no longer allow cash withdrawals at the counter.
The Australian bank tempers by specifying that only a “small number” of agencies will be concerned. Instead, customers are encouraged to use ATMs. Problem, there is also a shortage of distributors…
THE Daily Mail Australia warns that this trend is not without risk. The big banks could indeed find themselves unable to carry out electronic transactions in the event of a cyberattack.
“The entire digital payment system depends on an internet connection to function. So if there is an interruption of the internet, it will no longer be possible to pay”said cybersecurity expert Ben Britton.
This is also something that the head of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab has warned us about several times… In a scenario of cybernetic harassment of payment systems competing with the SWIFT network (Chinese CIPS, Russian SPFS, Indian NPSI, etc.), Bitcoin would be king.
Either way, there is worse than the risk of a cyberattack.
Remove cash to justify the CBDC?
Central bankers have two rather worrying arguments in favor of the CBDC.
The first is that it will maintain central currency if people stop using cash. This is likely to happen by dint of removing the distributors. Let’s not reverse cause and effect…
The second argument is that the CBDC would be a “safe” currency, thereby suggesting that the money you have in your bank is not:
After all, it is true that banks can fail. But be careful not to fall from Charybdis into Scylla. The CBDC is not bitcoin.
The CBDC is on the contrary the technocratic plan B in the event of an economic depression against the backdrop of world war and accelerated dedollarization.
More than one American bank would go bankrupt if the United States lost its “exorbitant privilege”. The reason being that the country’s chronic trade deficit will drag down the dollar. This will result in monster inflation and a collapse in the value of US treasury bonds which have already taken the skin of Silicon Valley Bank.
The only way out would be to ration consumption. And what better way to do this than with a programmable CBDC? The IMF is already considering using it to prohibit the purchase of certain products. Or even give it an expiration date.
Outcry against the CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency)
If we hear little about the CBDC on the old continent, we observe the Anglo-Saxons are seriously beginning to worry about it. And in particular the former governor of the English central bank Mervin King who recently rebelled against the BRitcoin project.
Across the Atlantic, Florida Governor Ron De Santis, tipped to run for the White House in the next presidential election, is leading the protest:
“Cash is king. When you have it, you have power. The minute everything is digitized, someone else will have control over your money. And the question is whether they will let you live your life or whether they will stop you. Think about what happened in Canada. You remember when truckers protested the vaccine and the government pressured the banks to freeze their money. […] Can you imagine if we went to the CBDC? »
In a fragmented and hyperinflationary monetary world, the CBDC will be an instrument of consumption control to avoid the worst.
Democracy as a modest safeguard, but absolutely anything is possible. Widespread bank failure (world war + global oil supply disruption) would provide fertile ground for the CBDC.
Necessity being law, it is even to be feared that some have the idea of imitating China and its social credit system.
What then would be the humanist horizon? A sad world where servile profiles selected by AI will be able to climb the social ladder when others will see their money declined in a myriad of situations?
Fortunately, Bitcoin exists. He is freedom’s first line of defense in the face of worst-case scenarios. As a bonus, it is the best store of value the world has ever known.
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