A MAJOR Move Toward A Cashless Society

We Are About To Witness A MAJOR Move Toward A Cashless Society- by Michael Snyder - http://endoftheamericandream.com/we-are-about-to-witness-a-major-move-toward-a-cashless-society/ The war on cash has just gone to an entirely new level. When I heard that the European Union was planning to completely ban all cash transactions above 10,000 euros, I hada hard time believing it. There are so many wild rumors flying around on the Internet these days, and so I wasn’t going to write about this unless I could confirm it. Unfortunately, this particular rumor is quite real. Under the pretext of fighting “moneylaundering and terrorist financing”, the European Union will be entirely outlawing all cash payments greater than 10,000 euros. The following comes from the official website of the Council of the European Union… By limiting large cash payments, the EU will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money. An EU-wide maximum limit of €10.000 is set for cash payments. Member stateswill have the flexibility to impose a lower maximum limit if they wish. So this means that in some countries the upper limit could potentially be a lot lower than 10,000 euros. But instead of framing it as a major move toward a cashless society, the EU is trying to claim that this is all about fighting terrorists. The following is what Zbyněk Stanjura, the Minister for Finance in the Czech Republic, has said about this upcoming change… Terrorists and those who finance them are not welcome in Europe. In order to launder dirty money, criminal individuals and organisations had to look for loopholes in our existingrules which are already quite strict. But our intention is to close these loopholes further, and to apply even stricter rules in all EU member states. Large cash payments beyond €10.000 will become impossible. Trying to stay anonymous when buying or sellingcrypto-assets will become much more difficult. Hiding behind multiple layers of ownership of companies won’t work any more. It will even become difficult to launder dirty money via jewellers or goldsmiths. Meanwhile, the European Central Bank has been actively considering the possibility of introducing a “digital euro”. The following comes from the official website of the EuropeanCentral Bank… We are working with the national central banks of the euro area to investigate whether to introduce a digital euro. It would be a central bank digital currency, an electronicequivalent to cash. And it would complement banknotes and coins, giving people an additional choice about how to pay. Well isn’t that convenient? As they take cash away from the general population, it turns out that they have already been working on the replacement. Incredibly, the ECB even has the gall to claim that this new digital currency will be “like cash”… A digital euro would offer an electronic means of payment that anyone could use in the euro area. It would be secure and user-friendly, like cash is today. As central bankmoney issued by the ECB, it would be different from “private money”, but you could also use a card or a phone app to pay with digital euro. Yes, you will be able to spend it just like you can spend cash. But unlike cash, a digital euro will allow authorities to track whatever you buy and sell with it. Won’t that be wonderful? By the way, the Federal Reserve is currently working on a digital currency as well. And this is all happening as the private cryptocurrency industry is imploding all around us. Many had believed that decentralized cryptocurrencies would be the future of commerce, but global central banks were never going to allow that to happen. Instead, it appears that they intend to force all of us on to a cashless grid in which everyone uses digital currencies that are issued by them. Needless to say, a lot of people out there are quite wary of any moves toward a cashless society because they believe that it is part of the “end times” scenario describedin the Bible. According to one recent survey, approximately 39 percent of all Americans are convinced that we are living in the “end times” right now… Nearly two in five Americans, including half of self-identified Christians and a quarter of the religiously unaffiliated, agree “we are living in the End Times,” a new studyhas found. That’s about 39% of Americans who believe we are living in the End Times, according to Pew Research, highlighted by Lifeway Research. Other surveys have come up with similar results. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us, because global events have definitely started to spin out of control in recent years. At this point, even secular websitesare publishing articles about the surging popularity of “apocalyptic scenarios”… There’s no denying that the apocalypse is currently having a moment, culturally and politically. It could be driven partly by the pandemic and fears of climate change. Thoseare actual, frightening apocalyptic scourges. Russia’s war has also set off alarm bells for certain evangelicals, as there was a Cold War tradition of identifying the country, variably, with Gog or Magog. Seeing Slate discuss such things made me chuckle. But this is where we are. Just about every day, more crazy things take place that have literally never happened before. For example, I came across the following story earlier today… For past 12 months, scientists have been studying a 50-second burst of energy from over a billion light-years away that could change how we understand how stars live and die. In December 2021, a massive blast of energy hit the Earth’s atmosphere. Its source was a gamma-ray burst – one of the most powerful explosions in the universe – but not justany gamma ray burst. One scientist said at the time that the event – named GRB 211211A – “looks unlike anything else we have seen before”. As time rolls along, things are only going to get even more weird. If you have been waiting for life to “return to normal”, you can stop right now. It simply is not going to happen, and I believe that global events will accelerate even more during the early stages of 2023. ------------------------------- Digital Currency: The Fed Moves Toward Monetary Totalitarianism- Tyler Durden - https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/digital-currency-fed-moves-toward-monetary-totalitarianism The Federal Reserve is sowing the seeds for its central bank digital currency (CBDC). It may seem that the purpose of a CBDC is to facilitate transactions and enhance economicactivity, but CBDCs are mainly about more government control over individuals. If a CBDC were implemented, the central bank would have access to all transactions in addition to being capable of freezing accounts. It may seem dystopian�something that only totalitarian governments would do�but there have been recent cases of asset freezing in Canada and Brazil. Moreover, a CBDC wouldgive the government the power to determine how much a person can spend, establish expiration dates for deposits, and even penalize people who saved money. The war on cash is also a reason why governments want to implement CBDCs. The end of cash would mean less privacy for individuals and would allow central banks to maintaina monetary policy of negative interest rates with greater ease (since individuals would be unable to withdraw money commercial banks to avoid losses). Once the CBDC arrives, instead of a deposit being a commercial bank�s liability, a deposit would be the central bank�s liability. In 2020, China launched a digital yuan pilot program. As mentioned by Seeking Alpha, China wants to implement a CBDC because �this would give [the government] a remarkableamount of information about what consumers are spending their money on.� The government could easily track digital payments with a CBDC. Bloomberg noted in an article published when the digital yuan pilot program was launched that the digital currency �offers China�s authorities a degree of control never possible with cash.� A CBDC could allow the Chinese government to monitor mobile app purchases (which accounted for about 16 percent of the country�s gross domestic product in 2020) more closely. Bloombergdescribes how much control a CBDC could give Chinese authorities: The PBOC [People�s Bank of China] has also indicated that it could put limits on the sizes of some transactions, or even require an appointment to make large ones. Some observerswonder whether payments could be linked to the emerging social-credit system, wherein citizens with exemplary behavior are �whitelisted� for privileges, while those with criminal and other infractions find themselves left out. Details on China�s social credit system can be found here: https://mises.org/wire/progressive-governance-needs-social-credit-state The Chinese government is waging war on cash. And they are not alone. In 2017, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a document offering suggestions to governments�evenin the face of strong public opposition�on how to move toward a cashless society. Governments and central bankers claim that the shift to a cashless society will help prevent crime and increase convenience for ordinary people. But the real motivation behindthe war on cash is more government control over the individual. And the US is getting ready to establish its own CBDC (or something similar). The first step was taken in August, when the Fed announced FedNow. FedNow will be an instantpayment system and is scheduled to be launched between May and July 2023. FedNow is practically identical to Brazil�s PIX. PIX was implemented by the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB) in November 2020. It is a convenient instant payment system (usingmobile devices) without user fees, and a reputation as being safe to use. A year after its launch, PIX already had 112 million people registered, or just over half of the Brazilian population. Of course, frauds and scams do occur over PIX, but mostare social engineering scams (see here, here, and here) and are not system flaws; that is, they are scams that exploit the public�s lack of knowledge of PIX technology. Bear in mind that PIX is not the Brazilian CBDC. It is just a payment system. However, the BCB has access to transactions made through PIX; therefore, PIX can be consideredthe seed of the Brazilian CBDC. It is already an invasion of the privacy of Brazilians. And FedNow is set to follow suit. Additionally, the New York Fed has recently launched a twelve-week pilot program with several commercial banks to test the feasibility of a CBDC in the US. The program willuse digital tokens to represent bank deposits. Institutions involved in the program will make simulated transactions to test the system. According to Reuters, �the pilot [program] will test how banks using digital dollar tokens in a common database can helpspeed up payments.� Banks involved in the pilot program include BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, US Bank, and Wells Fargo. The global financial messaging serviceprovider SWIFT is also participating to �support interoperability across the international financial ecosystem.� (This video details the pilot program and how the US CBDC would work.) The IMF is also thinking of a way to connect different CBDCs under a single system. In other words, the IMF plans to create a PIX/FedNow for CBDCs around the globe: Things could change as money becomes tokenized; that is, accessible to anyone with the right private key and transferable to anyone with access to the same network. Examplesof tokenized money include so-called stablecoins, such as USD Coin, and central bank digital currency. The reception of Brazil�s PIX shows that FedNow will likely be widely adopted due to its convenience; however, this positive economic and technological element should notovershadow the increased control instant payment systems will give to central banks. The BCB has access to all transactions made by Brazilians through PIX, and this would only get worse should a CBDC be implemented. With a CBDC, it would be easier for the government to carry out expansionary monetary policies (which cause misallocations of resources and business cycles) and exert greatercontrol over citizens� finances.