Why Central Banks Are Launching Digital Currencies
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- čas přidán 30. 05. 2024
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SOURCES:
I've linked my sources in the blog that goes along with this video. Links are in the text.
www.moneymacro.rocks/2023-12-...
Timestamps:
0:00 - introduction
2:49 - Speakly
4:25 - the problem with money today
13:24 - advantages of CBDC
24:47 - the dangers of CBDC
28:12 - discussion
Attribution:
Besides those mentioned on screen, I used a clip from Chase bank and a clip from the BIS
Narrated and produced by Dr. Joeri Schasfoort
Edited by Chris Adewole
Thumbnail by Tom Hurling studiotomkin.com/
Central Bank Digital Currencies Are Here, What You Need to Know
The Future of Money: What Central Banks Are Planning
Are Central Bank Digital Currencies Really That Dangerous?
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Genuinely so hyped to try this out. I'm a polyglot but I need to learn German to better communicate with my inlaws and move to Austria. This is incredibly well timed. I was dreading taking classes and I need to get to A2 level before moving.
You not that it's wrong. Watch the movie 🎬 the demolition man
The big problem, relative to your example of a voucher, is that now theoretically, all your money are vouchers. At best, I think it will lead everyone to move to decentralized currencies, which will lead again to a new type of society where governments can't devalue their currencies.
But reality is, if these currencies can be updated, they can be changed. Now that might already be true today. But it will change societies. Especially fraud and illegal activities.
You could also add something that I myself find interesting. A flat transfer tax as the only tax. But then again, you'd have to force people to only own your currency for it to be effective.
So there's a lot of big IF's. Shortterm, I think nothing will change. But long term, abuses will lead to changes that fundamentally changes how government works in society.
I wish you'd spent more time on the idea of them issuing time limited money i.e. money with an expiry date aka money as vouchers, as that also has some pretty intriguing economic implications, quite apart from debates over people's rights. If it works out the way they theorize, it'd actually give authoritarian states more economic tools to use than democratic ones. Which, apart from concerns over rights, also just gives them a competitive advantage in managing their economies.
If CBDC is required to be online, the central bank can just determine intrest rates, flat out
I really dislike the strangle hold that these card companies have over the economy. It adds a lot of friction to transactions making micro transactions infeasible.
Then again, I’m wary of cbdc for the same reasons you’ve outlined.
As long as hard paper money is still accepted tender then I guess I can live with cbdc. The government is already able to find out my bank information anyway.
Government will always get you. The totalitarian systems of the 20th century relied on cash. If you have a bad government, you're out of luck no matter the money you use. They can always force you to do stuff.
The argument about bad software is also strange given how outdated, insecure and bug infested the software of banks is in general.
The 1-3% card fee is just ridiculous. I wonder what percentage of GDP these transactions make, but US corps. are essentially taxing the whole world. Even if we used QR codes for instant bank transfers in the EU it will be better.
Yeah it kind of boggles my mind that credit card issuers and processors take 1.5% to 3.5% (NerdWallet tells me) of every transaction. Now that people are using cards for everything, that adds up to a mind-blowing amount of money, and the majority goes to the card issuers. Isn't the 20-30% interest rate they are getting from cardholders (who carry a balance) enough?
@@weird_law An important thing to keep in mind is that 1.5-3.5% goes to the company that runs the transaction usually visa or Mastercard where as the interest goes solely to the banks that issued the card
Ya, a 1.5% to 3.5% sales tax on nearly the entire economy, but since it goes to a private company and not the government it doesn’t count.
Pretty sure this depends strongly on your location. I recently moved to Canada, and find it much worse here than in Europe. A mate told me the EU managed to colelctively bargain a better deal with Mastercard and Visa, but that could be nonsense.
I believe the best way to ensure a potential CBDC is good vs bad, is for the source code to be publicly accessible.
To make this work, we need a lot of talk between software architects, programmers, and economic historians.
A see open source as a critical piece to a CBDC being trustworthy.
Totally agree
I'm with you on this. Crypto-currencies in essence share that philosophy and largely are verifiable in their source code _and_ its execution using an open, participatory, decentralised network. That latter part does not have to be mandatory however. We can still rely on trust, norms, audits and the legal system as additional checks and balances against abuse on this level. But open source CDBCs with well-defined means of execution and integration are mandatory. Of course central parties could abuse it if the checks and balances fail, but _just_ decentralised execution isn't sufficient for safety either. What exact software runs on that decentralised network at a particular moment is still a non-democratic decision and thus a liability that eventually gets exploited. Transparency and checks and balances are still the best known methods to mitigate risk here.
CBDCs will be run on the XRP ledger. Ripple is the private company working with governments around the world to set up their CBDCs for cross border settlement.
Will never happen.
@@TheAdamAdy Which to me, means it will be mistrusted.
I like how Christine Lagarde just barely avoided saying the US
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Yes , terms of "friendly" and "unfrendly" are funny to ear when you know that geopolotical forces are nothing to deal with friend , just profits
I mean we have the unfriendly Russian gas ans rhe friendly shist friendly américain gas in Europe, lol guess the cheaper one
The UUU...uhhh. the UN! Those damn UN dollars.
When I saw Joeri uploaded a video about CBDC I immediately clicked to watch it. Thanks for continuing to produce interesting, educational and accurate information 😊
Same, didn't even blink!
I like the freedom to use my contact less Debit Card or cash because I was once in Tesco and they were unable to process cards so people were unable to purchase their shopping. So, I just paid in cash and my time was not wasted.
I was once in Walmart and it was one of those times when they were mismanaging their staffing and people were waiting in line for 30 minutes with full carts. Suddenly they announce that their credit card processing system is down and they don't know when it will be back up. Literally like 25 full carts of stuff abandoned as people walked out.
True. But the same can be say about places where "sorry, we do not accept cash". More means of transaction, harder it is for companies to serve them all.
@@adaslesniak Where have you seen someone not accepting cash, genuinely haven't heard of this so far
Control of purchasing
Terrorism is product of society by oppression 😢
An important advantage that you probably haven't thought of is that physical money (as long as you have it) always works. No matter if there is a power outage, network or software problems or other problems with the infrastructure. So maybe it deserves two stars for convenience 😉
I was thinking about this too but paper money only always works because we blindly trust it. This is an issue in NZ at moment with a bunch of forgeries circulating. That wouldn't be an issue if everyone had the equipment to verify the paper money but few do.
If there is a power outage, people will basically use other methods like "store loans"... My family was 2 weeks without electricity and basically every business was working like that because they didn't want cash either
If I'm in power outage I have bigger problems. Your argument is about safety. And money is not safe. I don't want lot of money in my house to attract thieves who can not only steal the money, but hurt my family in the process.
Well technically to make a purchase the merchant needs to have a cash register and the possibility to make a receipt and give it to you and this needs electricity anyway. So yeah in theory cash would work in a power shortage but in practice payment would be difficult anyway.
@@nicknickbon22 carbon copy paper pad on hand in that situation to make a receipt
In Indonesia, we can pay for ecommerce purchases by "Cash on Delivery". So, you pay for the item by cash to the delivery person. HOWEVER, IT'S REALLY BAD SYSTEM, as it endangers the lives of the couriers. A lot of people want it to be abolished. The excuse that ecommerce companies use to keep it around is to "let unbanked people be able to online shop." The problem is these unbanked people tend to be very uneducated. So, the policy is that they must give the money to the courier first before they can open the package. But people think that they can open the package first, see if they like it or not, and pay only if they want to keep it. It doesn't work that way, obviously, but the result is the lives of delivery people are in danger. People have threatened and even killed delivery people because the delivery people would not let them open the package first before paying. Also, "cash on delivery" is also bad for merchants because it results in a lot of returns. A lot of money (and plastic) is wasted due to "cash on delivery".
Cash on delivery is also a headache to drivers and the company. Drivers have to drive back to HQ to deposit the money. Sometimes customers doesn’t have change. And the company has to make sure system is in place to prevent theft.
also i feel like that would leave these delivery drivers vulnerable to being robbed...
That's why I never accept argument that cash is safe.
that's not a cash problem that's a crime problem
its nobodys bussiness to decide how payments are made except for the buyers and sellers.
The Germans are obsessed with the cost of non cash transactions. But cash is not free of processing cost. Interestingly in the UK ( not sure about elsewhere) if you will look at the back of your receipt you will often see a statement that the sales price includes x.x% payment processing cost irrespective whether cash or card or voucher etc. Certainly for big shops like supermarkets taking cash in payment is not cost free, it has to be counted , kept safe , security service to collect the cash and bank it has costs etc.
I will have to double check what you claim is on the back of UK receipts (which are semi-uniform).
the germans are very much against most things digital in general, whether its based on merit or not. Anything digital is assumed to be bad until proven otherwise essentially (the amount of fax machines in german businesses in 2023 would surprise you for example)
So I can say it, a mixing between Cash and Digital Currency is the best way for person, to maximize his own benefits and minimize his own damages.
Kind of like the system we have, just with DCs not in the hands of private actors anymore.
I could settle for this.
I agree but I don't understand why they're trying to make something new when Monero is RIGHT THERE.
@@lowwastehighmelaninBecause Monero can’t scale to even a fraction of the demand of a major credit card company, much less to the scale of an entire nation.
How does it do that tho?
@@sonorioftrill Ethereum can.
An other problem with CBDC might be that there is a single point of failure... The software and servers running the CBDC would be a prime target for hostile states. Getting a view of all transactions in an other state, and having the option to bring down the payment systems there fits very well within the modern hybrid warfare.
CBDCs could "decentralise" how they store transactions so that no one single point of failure exists. Big tech companies already do similar things, e.g. CZcams has regional caches for videos. It's not a flaw inherent to CBDCs, but rather a potential flaw with a specific implementation of a CBDC.
several instances were small errors have brought down whole decentralised systems.
Yes. But, this is also something that central bankers have discussed as an advantage of a cbdc living alongside private and cash payment options. The first advantage is that there are more options. The second is that a government might build a system with an attack of a foreign power in mind whereas this is a bit much to ask from a private bank
@@MoneyMacroyou forgot to mention how in Nigeria the government also promised both CBDCs and cash, after the people refused to use cbdcs they banned cash, please do your research before talking about the good work of central banks.
Only if it is poorly designed. Most mission critical software is build on redundancy. You don't have a single server but servers across different nations all syncing with each other. You could even argue the central bank could build their CBDC with military grade defense mechanisms. At the end of the day, anything that is digital can be hacked. Every mayor banks has been hacked at this point.
Great break down!
My one criticism is this: vouchers are not the equivilant of an authoritarian CBDC that has expiration/consumption control.
The difference is in who makes the decision for the limit. With a voucher, the spender has decided (unless it is a gift) where the money exchanged for the voucher will be spent, accepting the conditions of the voucher as an informed consumer.
This is not the case with a CBDC except for the case where a CBDC is received as some form of gift, like stimulus or a litteral gift.
Correct, the problem with an expiring or consumption controlled CBDC is that governments could program the money so that it can only be used to purchase specific goods and services. We already have issues with governments attempting to control consumer choices through propaganda, with an expiring or consumption controlled CBDC we could have a situation where people’s choices are limited to what the government (and its lobbyists) want us to buy.
That’s a large limitation on our choices.
I agree the government needs to set into law that is unconstitutional for the government to create cbdc that restricts how money can be used (private parties should be able to do whatever they want, but public government can not). economic stimulus might be special
And what about government actions for stimulating specific stuff, like "cheap credits for houses" or "incentives for energy saving stuff"? It's the same, except in current case there need to be expensive middle man who will turn this wholesale initiative to concrete decisions. And about social benefits? E.g. single mother taking care of 3 young children, who can not work? Such money could be send to all less fortunate people so they can "buy food and don't go hungry".
@@MrSeanoleary The slippery slope will start with a welfare state using CBDC that prevents the money from being used on criminal activities or drugs(even if drugs are legal in the country or state). From there on, every possible purchase goes into the discussion.
CBDC can be extremely dangerous, we need to update our rights. Add a right to privacy, a right to freedom of money, and a right to controlling information.
A CDBC works both ways. It makes government spending transparent to the public. It reduces government corruption and the use of "black" budgets.
@@chrissolutions Wishful, naive thinking. CBDCs for thee, but not for me.
@TheAdamAdy Perhaps you should educate yourself about CBDCs rather than accept the false narratives that benefit the very groups you fear.
@@chrissolutions I just dont trust governments. Anyone who ever did either ended up disappointed, robbed, in jail or dead.
@@chrissolutionsCBDCs are under the control of people in power. it is a one way exchange.
When it comes to private for profit businesses vs government (in an allegedly democratic country), we know that the wellbeing of people is of little to no concern for the biggest businesses. The FDA was created in response to the use of ethylene glycol as a cheap sweetener that poisoned people. The EPA was formed to deal with massive pollution by corporations (e.g. Love Island). Building codes protect consumers from greedy, unethical builders. When has a billion dollar corporation lobbied government to protect people against their interests? Can I change the board of directors of Apple or Google if they abuse the public?
The wellbeing of people is of little to no concern for big business and for the government, neither of them cares about people. Is really scary to think that there's actually people out there who thinks politicians have our good in aim lol
Governments at least have to be reelected. Banks and credit card firms don't.
Can you change the president of the European Central Bank? No, the European Council does that. But just like many unpopular decisions at EU level, it's the heads of states that vote for them and then return to their voters to claim that their hands were tied and it's all the EU's fault.
@@greentoby26You have more and more often a choice which companies you support and which you don't in comparison to making a cross every 4 or 5 years for a pre selected politician who isn't liable for anything he promises before and for anything he does after he is elected.
Banks go down when people hate them, when they make terrible decisions and when the trust in them is lost. We had them at this point multiple times, and the politicians rescued banks "for the people" with trillions worldwide.
There are ethical banks, credit unions, community banks, people don't use them. There were nations that had their banks collapse and fixed their systemic problems with them after 2008. Iceland did a good job as an example.
@@GSC084 Yes, however the head of the states who elect the EZB are democratically elected hence you indirectly do vote for the president of the EZB. I also don't know about the hands being tied part. If you want to break European laws then sure the EU ties your hands but other than that it boils down to politicians. The UK blamed the EU for a lot of things they could have solved better without breaking EU laws instead they blamed the EU for everything and now that they are out of the EU the UK is still a mess.
Really awesome video. I especially love how you painstakingly try to be objective and level headed when preparing your videos. It’s quite rare to see someone who bith researches so deeply and yet refrains from sticking to a side and try to see others’ perspectives
The guy is a scholar. It's normal he has this balanced approach
Idk. He was pretty positive about CBDCs in this video. I especially wish he'd spent more time on the idea of them issuing time limited money i.e. money with an expiry date aka money as vouchers, as that also has some pretty intriguing economic effects.
You should make a comparison with cryptocurrencies in the same way you did this one. CBDC vs Crypto vs Digital Bank money
That is what I want to know? What is the difference between cryptocurrency and CBDC? Is crypto just dead ?
I was initially just opposed to CBDC's, but after watching your explanation I agree it's going to happen pretty soon, and we should be proactive in shaping them. A lot to think on, thanks for making this. imo, one of the best financial videos on the platform.
comment on convenience:
A Canadian going to the grocery supermarket in the Netherlands while visiting the lowlands of the EU. I filled up a few bags of groceries and none of my cards worked. I had Visa, MC, and debit, and my wife had another debit (a different Canadian bank Tangerine which BTW was Dutch ING direct before). Supermarkets accepted only Dutch bank cards and cash.
That night we had to skip supper since we don't eat out.
The bottom line, cash is king for tourists.
You need to check with your bank if it recommends you to tell them when you are going abroad. They may block your transactions otherwise as it can be evaluated as fraudulent payment with stolen card.
@@spaceshipearth356
Good advice but in my case it's incorrect. The cashier spoke very good English and she said that their store is DEBIT AND CASH ONLY. She also told me that all payment networks that are accepted have logos printed on the door. It was no MC Visa logos. However things change and Germany and The Netherlands both accepting more and more international cards.
You mentioned the reporting of large cash transactions as a reason for low privacy for cash. I think the every day person are more turned off from the government knowing every time they get a cup of coffee versus try to deposit $10,000 in a bank.
If you actually think your government has nefarious intent, them knowing about you moving around large amounts of money would be really important.
While them knowing how much you spend on coffee seems relatively unimportant.
If you don't think your government has nefarious intent, it doesn't seem to matter either way.
@@greenUsermanbut you still don't want the government knowing everything you do... right???
@@rickynorris1694 if the alternative is having a private company knowing everything you do, and then the government having access to that information indirectly, then sure. Give the information directly to the government.
I don't know why people see Visa as a more benevolent Big Brother than their own government when Visa will give your government all information on request anyway, and they'll also use it themselves for their own purposes.
If the government wants to know what you are up to all day every day, they can find out if they have the legal power to do so where you are. We are all easily tracked by multiple different methods and nothing is a secret unless you actively attempt to by not carrying around a phone, wearing masks, not driving a car with plates on, paying cash everywhere etc. For the vast majority of people the government does not care at all what you are up to and those it does care about are either being watched or taking steps to make themselves private. Once these currencies are introduced there will need to be leglistation to protect privacy. But it you pay using your debit card the bank has a log every time you buy a coffee too.
Great video on an important topic. Very informative and balanced. It would be great to get a follow-up on how CBDCs are similar and different from cryptocurrencies.
No Duh, this is the most glaring missing point of the entire video. CBDC's didn't just pop out of the either, the lame-o swift system has been used for decades because governments suck at innovation, and would never introduce better money, unless some unnamed private money starting with a B was gaining ground fast on the US dollar. Its like noticing that Poland was spending a lot more money on defense early in 1939, and then praising them for their forward thinking on defense issues, without mentioning any of the things their neighbors were doing...
Similar engine “block chain” but completely different in operation, Cbdc centralized the process by the gov. Crypto decentralized the control of the fiat currency at users
Ask any serious crypto advocate and you'll very quickly find out that they are vehemently opposed to CBDC's for a plethora of reasons mostly underpinned by a libertarian distrust of government control as a threat to individual freedom.
My stance on it is, if both is kept its better, since this would give people the choice, on how they want to pay certain things.
Paying with online payments is convinient on the World Wide Web, but just to buy groceries seems way too painfull since this would require to always have a charged phone at hand (and for me atleast I dont carry 24/7 a phone.), which is not convinient at all, as long as energy is not free and acceccible everywhere.
So in conclustion, both is nice, and not replacing one with another. (same as people see "gold" as a security measure, so is papermoney / metalmoney for digitalmoney, in my opinion.)
Great video! One thing I didn't hear discussed - maybe I missed it - is what happens when a power outage occurs? Cash is a backup payment method of last resort, and thus it seems to me like a necessary inefficiency to continue basic economic function during emergencies.
And do digital currencies need network access?
I see stores that use USB-powered transaction devices that can easily run off a power bank if they need to do so, and with offline CBDC transactions you'll still be able to transact without network access.
When a power outage occurs you will pay with cash. CBDC does not aim to eliminate cash
Very good video. The Bank of Canada just finished a 3 year survey about a potential CBDC here. Interest to see where it goes
Excellent analysis, thank you.
Finally you bring up the dangers after 20 minutes of selling people into cbdc. AND ITS NOT a toss up of what will happen. Its a question of when and where first not if.
If there is a ledger/blockchain type thing, how do you make sure the CBDC is actually private? And how do you stop a government backsliding and changing the system to take away the privacy from them?
Even if they can’t shut down an individual’s account, how do you stop a government shutting down the payment system to control people if there’s protests etc.?
It will be democratic, obviously. If it's democratic then it can do no wrong because people implicitly agree with everything that their elected representatives do. It's a bit like Brawndo and its electrolytes.
There isn't a blockchain ledger. Blockchain inherently does not scale to the size of a large national currency for everyday transactions. That's also not the point of a blockchain ledger. CBDC is the opposite of a digital distributed blockchain.
CBDCs aren't meant to be fully private. They are meant to be as private as cash. Cash also have serial codes on them that are actively tracked and monitored. Only the central bank would be able to see CBDC transactions and they wouldn't be linked to individuals but serial coded wallets.
Essentially it would increase privacy over current digital payments and reduce transaction cost. For the average person there would be no change in how they go about paying things.
@@joey199412 And you know for certain that this is how it will be and it will never be changed, because... why?
@@rutessian Because if you design with accountability in mind, someone will notice. And that one can broadcast it, collapsing the system as a whole.
Very clear explanation! Thank you for your hard work, Joeri.
Fantastic video and a comprehensive breakdown on the topic of CBDCs and the digital Euro! I really appreciate the depth you've gone into regarding the potential benefits and concerns, particularly around privacy and financial stability. It's discussions like these that pave the way for a well-informed public.
One aspect I hope can be explored in future content is how tax and tax collection might evolve with the introduction of the digital Euro. As taxation is a significant part of our economic system, understanding its interaction with digital currencies could provide a more complete picture of the changes we might expect.
Thanks for your hard work on this - looking forward to more insightful discussions!
I have nothing against it as long as physical cash still exists at the same time. I want life without a smart phone and internet to still be physically possible. If I leave my phone at home I want to be able to exist in society.
In theory you could get a non-phone device to do transactions thanks to offline CBDC transactions, but it depends on if they want to go down that route.
Exactly I understand what you mean. It gets annoying carrying around a phone all the time. Good old tangible currency is the best.
Some online services DO allow cash payments. For example a few privacy focussend VPNs allow you so send in cash by mail making it way more private than paying for it with bank/credit card.
This is one of the best channels on macro I've seen. Big fan of the middle of the road approach and the citation of sources.
CASH IS FREEDOM. DONT LET THEM TAKE IT AWAY.
Great, detailed explanation and discussion.
I also loved the "Tank"-Square picture at the end.
Thanks for putting this together. Very informative. Btw there are several financial service providers attempting to do forex more cost effectively (eg wise) so we arent only constrained to using clearing banks anymore.
You know what. I am pretty sure you have a lot of Indian students preparing for UPSC flock to your video because this is the best on CBDC. I still hope you make a video on UPI.
Great video, exhaustive and balanced!
I just want to point out that "programmable money" does not solve anything as soon as you need to interact with the real world.
E.g. you don't need someone to hold your money in escrow, but your still need someone to say "yep, the other person handed off the house keys and signed the contract".
You always need a trusted third party if you interact with the real world,. and at that point the whole "programmable money" part is unnecessary.
Thanks Yuri!
Great lesson. Thank you very much
I’m a simple man, when I see a new Money & Macro video, I click.
You're one of my favourite channels.
Love this kind of video, great job! Nice and neutral
What if we had both? CBDC and cash, hell even bitcoin. Diversification allows people choice and freedom (from the pro's and con's of each system).
That is indeed what most central banks are planning. To have all of these options
@@MoneyMacro No. Thats what they are promising you. They will ban it, if it makes them impossible to control it. As they did with liberty dollar.
I'm 40 and have never kept cash around. If cash is stolen then it is gone. If my card is stolen, then I can reverse charges and get my money back. And that was about the end of the argument for me in my teens and it has stuck for the last 25 years without issue.
I keep a little cash at home for emergencies... But have never once needed to use it.
I'm 48 and things where better when you got paid cash in a brown envelope, if you wanted to bank it you did and if you didn't want to you didnt
Finally a good and a non biased doom and gloom video regarding this topic. Thank you so much!
non-biased? are you stupid? It's obvious he thinks cbdcs will be great for everyone and wants them implemented. He spent 11 minutes praising them and about 4 addressing one concern - he said he'd present 4 arguments against them.
I think safety and reliability/availability should be separate categories. As for personal safety, digital is so much safer. People can’t rob me on the street or steal it from my house and I don’t think that’s the same as the money not being available in the bank.
Is there anything to the idea that CBDCs are also specifically taking aim at the ability of corporations to create vouchers at their own discretion (potentially circumventing the central banks control of the money supply)? With the size of adoption of some of these payment providers, it doesn't seem far-fetched to think that it could have some impact. Especially if the corporation is extra-national.
Klaar, duidelijk, grondig, evenwichtig. super.
There's no free lunch. They will offer a great service, true, but they will control and mess with people. Also true
GREAT video. First place I've really seen the pluses and minuses of all these digital currencies spelled out usefully.
Small note on the Farage issue:
He didn't get "debanked" he was chosen to be migrated away from the private banking arm of NatWest because he ceased doing business with them, which is well within their rights. Coutts is notorious for having very stringent requirements (Google what their deposit requirement is for example). If you are not saving or borrowing there is little need to have a private banker on call. He was offered a mainstream NatWest business account with all the functionality he could have required, not that that stopped him from making it into a political issue of course.
This isn't even close to something like Canada shutting the protestors accounts.
Source: I deal with Coutts regularly for my job.
Love your videos btw
My source was the BBC: www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66288464
This is why I figured that he was indeed unbanked for his views. Although indeed this was the call of a private institution.
How the institutions came to be perceived as woke totalitarians did not happen as a result of technicality .. the wokery is relentless, deeply unsettling and extremely damaging to social cohesion
Another point Yriy, Online shopping, and Convenience are not two different categories, Online shopping is part of convenience. Worth mentioning that it's impossible to buy a plane ticket for cash these days.
Put cash in a debit card, use the card to buy said ticket. 😂
@@NaumRusomarovAs mentioned, you can do that with many CBDCs aswell, and in some cases with fewer questions and less paperwork.
where you live? travel agencies still exist.
Farage was not unbanked -- i.e. have no access to banking services -- he had access to alternatives. He was de-bank from one particular bank.
The trust in governments to not change the goal posts once they have made the switch is naive to the extreme and not confirmed by history.
Always so informative! A pleasure to view.Thanks for your continued professional efforts!.
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+1213
I feel like half of this video talk about from people giving control to private entity controlled by government to people just giving control to government directly.
It doesn't really matter to me because government already control those private entity or capable of just pressuring those private entity into doing what they want.
Depends where you live. Less authoritarian governments can have problems with overly powerful banks sometimes, and multinational corporations (banks or otherwise) are always a menace... breaking Visa and Mastercard's strangle hold on transaction processing in many places would be a pretty huge benefit by itself. Though whether or not that's enough to outweigh any downsides is anotehr matter.
It's basically actual digital reserve notes from the issuer, as opposed to drawing debt/holding from a credit company or a bank. Since the reserve bank is actually issuing the notes in the first place, you're basically taking out the middle men.
Great video, as always!
I guess printing money also have expenses so they'll switch to this so it's easy and cost savings. Also it's easy to make money out of thin air this way
"making money out of thin air" is already how the entirety of modern economies function, CBDC or no. Joeri literally has a video about it czcams.com/video/cDNSNX48Kmo/video.html
I mean, private banks are already making money out of thin air, and they have been doing it over half a century. CBDCs wouldn't change that.
Yes, its extremely naive of the author of this video to think there wont be negative interest rate or expiration date on the CBDC in the future. It makes governments and money printers more powerful and in control. Extremely dangerous.
I think there is a distinction to be made between critiques that help flesh out proposals and fix potential problems, over-the-top complaints dismissing the whole idea still strike me as suspicious. After all, conservative outlets and commentators often promote the specific interests of wealthy private industries. And retail CBDCs seem like a threat to business models that rely on being intermediaries that CBDCs would be supplanting. In essence the real reason some people will oppose CBDCs is the exact same reason why the vast majority of people and businesses should support the idea, the lower fees and greater convenience.
I'm not a conservative and would not trust a central government with CBDC. The US federal government over steps its authority daily. I mean, would you trust the Republicans with CBDC?
Well said. I have in fact worked software for US banks and that shit is ancient. They still write checks. I am from India. I am my late 20s now, opened my account when I was 22. I haven't owned check book ever.
US payments in all way, are costly and inconvenient. They need to first move to proper digital payments like India though big wall street banks make a ton of money from transactions especially JPMC. So, they have been stalling any progress towards even a little bit of digital banking. Paypal is good but it's bandage on the system that is bad can't be used throughout.
I bought a piece of gum yesterday costed me 1 INR (which is 1/80 USD), and I paid with digital payment.
You must really love and trust the government lol. But there are many people like me who very much distrust the government and CBDC is just handling too much power to the government. If you want to live in a dictatorship, go ahead.
Its Fox News. Even when the side they're supporting is objectively correct, they will flat out lie because they don't care about that, they care only about creating anti federal and anti-democrat paranoia while undermining the credibility of the media in general, as these things support the political aims of their owners and only in particularly exceptional cases do they ever actually get punished for it.
Undermining the credibility and intelligibility of the media to the benefit of the Republican party is explicitly why Fox News was created in the first place.
sounds to me like VISA and others would be gone if digital money was adopted on a large scale, and id be for it
Excellent and fair video
This is the best explanation I have ever heard. Thank you for making this.
Can you please do a same objective view on WEF and whether they are trying to take away private ownership?
Ever been on their website? It's clear on their vision 2030.
That's merely a conspiracy theory.
What the WEF is largely priming for is a societal shift in how businesses orient themselves and that businesses shouldn't maximize profit but maximize stakeholder welfare. Stakeholders being customers, employees, environment, society and shareholders. The (economic) logic behind this is that if all companies have to abide by this new framework it would result in more positive extranalities which in turn would make the entire global society more rich. A better environment means happier, healthier people, better paid and treated employees are more productive and can spend more money, well treated customers are more eager to spend and have more consumer confidence, a stable society has more economic opportunities.
The theory is that all of these effects combined means the business would be more profitable this way than if it purely cared for shareholder profit maximization. But it can only be implemented on the (inter)national level.
I personally actually agree with the WEF standpoints on this. But it remains to be seen if it would actually work.
That's not what their site says, and that is never what it said. You are repeating a stupid meme based on an out-of-context quote from a piece of dystopic sci-fi that was written by a Danish politician.
@@adamvandolder1804 lmao, yeah their reasons are for the common good, I bet.... Keep thinking like that...
I'll cover this one for you: the WEF is not trying to take away private ownership.
Malaysia implemented GST (goods and services tax like VAT) in 2015. However we became the first country in the world to abolished GST in 2018 after change of government. What is your thought on that issue?
Salam orang Malaysia. Saya pun nak tahu jugak pasal GST ni.
Having a thief steal less of your hard earned money is a good thing.
@@rutessianLol. Not true. The only place you can avoid taxes is heaven.
@@CuriousCrow-mp4cx Are you a bot?
Fascinating video, seems like u did comprehensive research.
Glad you enjoyed it!
In Mexico cash can be used for most online shopping (the website generates a hash to identify the payment, and can be used in a convenience store to pay with cash)
i wish we had that here in denmark
I love that we are seeing advances in these types of technologies, I have been using "digital dollars" on blockchain to receive work payments for more than 5 years and it's a blessing in regions where the banking system isn't that strong... But like always it's sad that those with good banking systems are always the first ones in creating solutions, but better late than never I guess
If there was no cash people would find something/s to use instead.
Thank you for this very clear and educational video.
Nice job.
28:08 in addition to vouchers of private companies, several European countries also have national meal vouchers, which are regarded positively by both employers and employees.
That exists only because it can be written off as an expense.
One of my big worries, is how the servers would be handled.
Due to both the scale of a nation wide service and processing power required to handle the encryption/safety algorythems, banking servers require a lot of computting powee and by extension server maintainance.
Considering goverments already struggle with maintaining online services avaible 24/7 and won't be able to take advantage of the economies of scale that some banks have acces to (because of either their international scope or in some cases the conserning use of third party server host) to reduce the cost per capita of server expenses, it really concerns me that there could be service issues with this currencies, specialy when third world countries like mine (Colombia) try to implement them.
All things considered, it wouldn’t be that much computing power compared to most internet activities. Companies like Visa and Mastercard already do this after all, and compared to even hosting a modern website the compute power and network speed needed is rather light.
@@sonorioftrill The encryption algorythems can get quite heavy.
And goverments have already struggled with simpler services before.
@@quedtion_marks_kirby_modding Kilobytes to Gigabytes, compared to the video we just watched a transaction might be 1/ 1,000,000 of the size of it is really loaded with information, and this video was served over an encrypted link aswell. Computers are very good at encryption, and compared to figuring out what each of the 2 million pixels on a 1080p screen should be on the next frame encrypting and decrypting information is very light.
While i have no doubt that whatever specialty contractor ends up running such a system could still manage to screw it up, it’s not going to be because of the computer resources necessary.
@@quedtion_marks_kirby_moddingGovernments struggle with many things. So do private companies. The compute required for a national CBDC system isn't heavy at all compared to the systems we rely on for our daily lives such as payments, electricity, transportation, telecommunications, banking, etc. I think you're confusing how encryption works - the heavy load is on the side of people trying to crack it, not those who deploy it.
Thank-you, Dr. Shasfoort.
I think placing your money into an account backed by bullion would protect you from the loss of purchasing power in a currency which is much more likely with a CBDC, every time the banking sector is bailed out in a financial crisis.
A major topic not discussed here is how the use of CBDS could simplify tax reporting by individuals and businesses to the government. This task is a enormous burden that theoretically could be alleviated but building the reporting directly into the software, cutting out the tax service industry.
This could also alleviate the ability of actors to commit tax evasion and fraud.
All transactions will be recorded, government loves that
All transactions are already recorded.
It's the exact opposite. With current card payments, everything is recorded and accessed by Central banks, local banks, private banks, card issuers, governments and end-businesses. With CBDCs only Central banks and end-businesses could see the data, increasing everyones privacy.
CBDCs are a huge improvement on the privacy front. But sadly conspiracy theorists are sabotaging us and sadly forcing us to give more data to the government by keeping current digital payment systems in place, which is extremely bad and to be honest doesn't even fully conform to modern EU privacy mandates.
Never connected the dots between gold absolutists and CBDC haters. 1:20 The gold people use the same exact rhetoric and belief, I guess.
Gold is "just" advanced barter and intrinsically deflationary.. meaning it cools down any economy right when it wants to expand - with the effect being to transfer any wealth gains to the gold owners. Fiat (debt money) overcomes that by being based on promises, so can easily keep up with economic activity expansion.. which is why our economies could grow so well after the gold standard was abolished. Just one tiny problem - the promises that back up fiat are not valid forever, which means the fiat that is based on it actually decays - but it is not communicating this with the money surplus holders NOR the market, which leads to market failures and misallocations of resources as soon as economic growth falls below the inflation rate.
This happened for most developed countries in the late 80s..
@@joansparky4439 You explain the exact problems gold has too. Why does mining companies exist? Never heard of a valid argument for the gold standard that also doesn't apply to fiat. All you do with the gold standard is add extra middle man into the mix (making it less efficient).
@@nicholasdean3467
The basis of fiat is a delayed exchange of product between a creditor (delivers product) and a debtor (makes a promise of delivering product later). The amount of promises tracks perfectly with economic activity and thus allows for a value stable unit of account, something that metal commodity currencies can't do, as their relative value depends on supply and demand.
Thanks!
The main benefit of CBDC comes from the equation of exchange (M⋅V=P⋅Q). CBDC increases the Velocity of the Money, so if we could keep the inflation (P) low, that would stimulate the real GDP (Q).
1) tying business bank book-money together with a static 1:1 exchange rate at the central bank (legal tender) is anti-competitive and leads to market-failures
2) ignoring the limited timespan of validity (debt theory of money) of the promise that backs up fiat currencies (digital or not) creates the Zero Lower Bound interest problem that leads to market failures
So to answer the question in the title: BAD, VERY BAD.
Not really. Only 3% of all financial transactions are in cash, and that is globally. This is only rearranging the table settings, as the vast majority of all transactions are already digital.
@@BigHenFor
I explicitly wrote _"(digital or cash)"_ for that very reason.
My argument is that this CBDC will NOT solve the problems of the fiat money we got, but be even more of the same (which means the CB's & "experts" are either unaware or ignore things) and thus the situation will get worse.
To me the "privacy" part is the most important. I live in a country (Hungary) where I have very little trust in the government: but even in countries seemingly much better off in this regard we have seen examples that I regard as very scary. Look at what happened in Canada: I personally dont agree with the aims of the trucker protest but the way the government went forth and freezed any accounts not only of the participants is a huge warning. And I regard Canada as a free western country - much more so than my own. How much would actual dictatorships use this to opress their population?
So I dont believe for a minute that this will only be used against terorists and terrorist supporters in the long run - not even in the short run.
The Bank of Canada is not the Canadian government. What you saw happening in Canada with the freezing of accounts is actually the exact reason why a well designed CBDC is needed. It would be independent of government tampering while still being useable for every day purchases no matter your political affiliations or ideological orientation.
Under the category of safety you neglected to say how non-cash payments are safer for vendors in high crime areas. I worked the night shift at a convenience store and the scariest thing that happened was when someone tried to buy something with $100 bill. This was 1985 so $100 was not a usual thing at a convenience store. It was usually someone casing your place to see if they were going to come back and rob the store and possibly stab or shoot you.
Great video. Finally someone who put it like this.
To put it simply, if you WANT to use digital payment methods, you might as well use a method that is not provided by a private company that takes a percentage of every transaction
I would argue that the government (at least the US Government) would do a worse job than the private companies
@@josh-ghaddar At least you can vote out officers. What can you do with a company?
@@hanifarroisimukhlis5989 technically you can with voting shares and publicly listed companies, but not in a real democratic way since there's no limitation of one voting share per person, meaning it's not democratic voting and just more private authoritarianism with extra steps.
@@hanifarroisimukhlis5989 Ever heard of competition? Its much easier to go to competition than to vote someone out of office.
I think there should be a mix of cbdc's, cash, and privately developed digital currencies running on public blockchains. And they should all be easily exchangeable.
That way people can choose who to trust, how much privacy they want, it keeps fees low, and there is competition to keep everyone on good behavior. It takes away power from both companies and government.
Where would we even get the energy to scale this? Blockchain either inherently requires a lot more computation or offers a solution that is recentralized or moving power to big players.
Govs will never allow this. No one would use the gov CBDC then.
@@klakkalakka6704CBDC’s are almost always centralized using a centralized ledger. The energy requirements are negligible. It’s not like Bitcoin.
Hi, do you have any recommended channel like yours? I like the way you do a research and I learn a lot from you as fellow economist. I almost finish all of your videos that's why I'm asking if you know something that could help me learn more. Thanks
I don't really know any channel in my style (this is why I started it). In other formats I recommend following people like Noah Smith and Adam Tooze on substack. The Odd Lots podcast is also really good. On YT, I can happily recommend Patrick Boyle, the Plain Bagel, How Money Works, Ben Felix, and Unlearning Economics and Asionemetry.
@@MoneyMacro Thanks sir, highly appreciated.
This was such a good video explaining CBDCs!
the way i see it, if people are not worried about privately owned digital currency, worrying about government owned digital currency is somewhat redundant. This is off course as long as physical cash stays in circulation.
Any interest charged when using CBDC? Who controls/distributes the supply of CBDC in these countries using it? How is inflation and value measured/controlled in CBDC? Are there any restrictions on what you can buy/sell and how much (quantity) within a certain time frame? I can no longer listen to your nonsense.
Probaly getting paid to promote their agenda
Likely no interest with cbdc as it a currency and since it would be run by Central Banks ie state run.
There would be no fees, just as all currency minted by a Central bank or Federation of banks in the USA case
Inflation and such would be measured the same but with more help from computersas any other fiat currency. Would be no restrictions just would be another payment type cash debt credit or cbdc. No comment on the nonsense claim
@@johnfoster2584bet your a bitcoin guy lol
27:10 im glad you left this in because it just caught me so off guard, the serious tone followed by "they will make us buy bug based meat" was such a tone shift, so funny
Fox News, are just not credible sources on Anything. They're not meaningfuly distinct from Soveit era Pravda in terms of accuracy of reporting. (The american right as a whole only really has any credibility with anyone due to decades of propaganda intended to induce anti-government paranoia while undermining the credibility of legitimate reporting).
Though they do make for a good source of clips of nonsensical conspiracies being presented if one's goal is to debunk those.
as an Indian in which here many moving rapidly to UPI (scan and pay) please use cash more guys!😮 cuz elites always find to siphon off and avoid pay taxes only middle and poor suffer from transparency! cash is 👑💖
I think so long as cash remains strongly supported then a CBDC isn't any less democratically risky than keeping your money in the bank.
Great informative video!
not even naming bitcoin. the starting point of all programable money in an entire 30 minutes is just amazing.
One thing that private card companies provide, which I can't expect from a CBDC, is protection from fraud. If I fall victim to a fraud or scam and I've paid with my credit card, usually all I have to do is call my card company or backcharge the transaction. With a CDBC, that process will likely be difficult or impossible.
I doubt that, they can already reverse stock trades. I can imagine they'll have a similar ability for a CBDC.
Who says it will be more difficult? There's less middlemen (payment processor), and central bank is way more accountable than private banks. And many payment processor (cough Zelle) are reluctant to reverse fraudulent transaction.
Not true. Deposit insurance in developed countries are not provided by the banks - they’re government in nature.
I used card for years up until I got hacked twice info stolen had to make new bank account. I went back to a tangible currency (cash) lot easier no info attached remains anonymous no digital trail. Was at the gas station one time person in front of me their card was still loading to pay, I went up payed my gas in cash done quick and easy not waiting for loading.
In theory it might be more private than current card payments, but in practice, well.. you said it yourself: governments will be able to access your transaction data. They can't access cash transaction data.
Not really an issue unless you do ML
@@moonlightboiii The ol' "you don't need privacy if you have nothing to hide" which unfortunately is countered by "show me the man and i'll show you the crime".
Just because you don't do money laundering doesn't mean you should want the government to have the power to tell you when, how much or how to spend your money.
They already have access
Well there are other ways of tracing cash payments, like CCTV recording, forensics, etc. It just makes the floor higher, but since when did that stop government eh?
CBDCs are more private than current card payments because the amount of entities having your data drops from (Central bank + Local bank + Card issuer (Visa/Mastercard) + Government entity + Business) to just (Central bank + Business). In the case of the EU it would mean only the EU has data and individual nation-state governments wouldn't even be able to access this information.
Current card payments are worst of both worlds.
Also cash isn't as private as many seem to think, all bills are serial coded and their movement is tracked by cash registered and logged. It's more private than current card payments, but there is a serious case to be made that CBDCs would be more private than current cash. (At least in the EU)
China is already pretty much a cashless society with Alipay and wechat pay. it went from being a country where cash was king 15 years ago to one where out of convenience most people have adopted e payments for everything. no one uses cards either anymore. and whether the central bank can impose their CBDC is questionnable. but they don't really need to anyways.
1:55 How come you have Crimea highlighted, while Ukraine isn't?
Love your take Joeri, I'm looking forward to CBDCs being implemented here in Canada. I'll do my best to educate my friends and family about it.
Why does the person who owns the cash not have a say about what they want, we or most have earned the money we have, we have paid tax on it , the dues are paid and the remainder belongs to the recipient. I want the freedom to spend my remaining cash as I please, and not have a third party, telling me I can’t buy something because I have reached my limit on the carbon scale.
I've never read a CBDC proposal that includes anything like that.
Dont forget the risk of power outages and system breakedown when rating digital payment systems
The car example is so good. Yeah, thanks to the transaction now the government know you bought a car, not by registering it or by getting an insurance
I seriously don't get the privacy issue. Tracking money is essential to any economy, you need to make sure the economy is what it is, otherwise it's impossible to plan. Go ahead and try to deposit a large sum of money and you'll get a nice visit the next day. Use cards for small costs, large costs by cash have to be traceable already by law
I would also like to add that this lack of privacy goes both ways. A close member of the my now former prime minister was found with 75k euros in notes. Money laundry gets harder and those it's harder to be corrupt as their transactions will also get tracked
What about 4 million for the twins, everyone is having amensia , personally i dont see the advantage of cbdc but i also dont understand the pricavy conserns, the only point against i think is fair is the possibility of a expire date on it.
Yeah privacy concerns are real but people do not realize a certain degree of data sharing is essential to a functioning, prosperous society.
@@weird-guy I don't think the 4 million for the twins would be solved by this. The money was always in the NHS, it's not a tracking problem but rather who authorised the movement
As for the expiring date, I didn't understand that so well in the sense of if it's necessary or just something that could be added to it
@@mensrea1251 yeah, we share a lot of things with the government already, they know how much we receive and we fill taxes every year. They're pretty well aware of our money situation that CBDCs wouldn't change much, with cards giving you the chance of still making small transactions completely anonymous
Of course we still have a right for privacy and we should fight for it, but we have institutions in place that heavily limit their power