Edward Snowden Warns of Imminent Dangers from CBDCs

On Saturday, whistleblower and privacy advocate Edward Snowden published an article on Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). In the piece disclosed on his personal blog, Snowden appears highly critical of CBDCs, calling them the “newest danger cresting on the public horizon.”

Snowden emphasized that CBDCs are not what we are being told or think they are. He said:

“Reader, I will tell you.

Rather, I will tell you what a CBDC is NOT—it is NOT, as Wikipedia might tell you, a digital dollar. After all, most dollars are already digital, existing not as something folded in your wallet, but as an entry in a bank’s database, faithfully requested and rendered beneath the glass of your phone.”

Central banks and politicians worldwide may have already backed Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and some countries are very close to rolling it out on their citizens. Critics are convinced that they are another tool for intensifying control over people and are essentially nothing more than centralized databases.

Snowden, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA) subcontractor, is a fan of decentralized assets like Bitcoin, however opposes the centralized nature of CBDC’s and issues a stern warning in the article:

“Instead, a CBDC is something closer to being a perversion of cryptocurrency, or at least of the founding principles and protocols of cryptocurrency—a cryptofascist currency, an evil twin entered into the ledgers on Opposite Day, expressly designed to deny its users the basic ownership of their money and to install the State at the mediating center of every transaction.”

The same warning was later repeated on Twitter when he told his 4.9 million followers:

A CBDC is a perversion of cryptocurrency, or at least the founding principles and protocols of it—a cryptofascist currency, expressly designed to deny you the basic ownership of your money by installing the State at the center of every transaction. https://t.co/720SYvqzZM

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 9, 2021

Snowden ends his publication by stressing that people earn a living through their labor and openly questioned if even that should become state property:

”Of all the things that might be centralized and nationalized in this poor man’s life, should it really be his money?”

The same day, Snowden had taken to Twitter by reacting to an article that had appeared in the New York Times, again stating the imminent dangers to people’s freedom CBDC’s hold.

What is a Central Bank Digital Currency, you ask? Oh, you know: just a “useful policy tool” for casually annihilating the savings of every wage-worker in the country if they don’t spend them fast enough. https://t.co/TAKQCEDcOX

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 9, 2021

The post Edward Snowden Warns of Imminent Dangers from CBDCs appeared first on iGaming.org.