The Pomp Podcast - #841 Central Bank Digital Currencies Will Be A Violation Of Human Rights
Episode Date: February 27, 2022This episode is a little different than the usual podcast format. There is no guest. Instead, I will share a couple of thoughts I have around a specific topic. Today I break down Central Bank Digital... Currencies (or CBDCs) and explain why their creation will lead to some of the biggest violations of human rights that we have ever seen. ======================= The Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep is the most advanced solution on the market for thermoregulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. Go to https://www.eightsleep.com/Pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and save $150 at checkout. Eight Sleep currently ships within the USA, Canada, and the UK. ======================= Today’s episode is sponsored by Abra. Based in California and backed by top VC firms, Abra is an all-in-one simple, secure app that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies, get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral and earn interest with up to 14% APY on stablecoins and 8.15% APY on Bitcoin. Join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App store. If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account. You came, you invested — now conquer. ======================= Fundrise is largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That’s right, Fundrise is making high-end private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use, automated platform. See for yourself how over 190,000 investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to Fundrise.com/Pomp today and, for a limited time, get $10 when you place your first investment. That’s Fundrise.com/Pomp =======================
Transcript
Discussion (0)
what's up everyone this is anthony pompliano most of you know me as pomp you're listening
to the pomp podcast simply the best podcast out there now let's kick this thing off today's
episode is a breakdown of why central bank digital currencies will be one of the greatest violations
of human rights in history i hope that you enjoyed this deep dive and i really enjoyed
thinking through this and putting together these thoughts before we get into this episode though
I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep.
Eight Sleep is the single best product that I have purchased over the last three years.
It completely changed my life. I'm not joking. Pay attention. The Pod Pro Cover, which goes
over your mattress by Eight Sleep, is the most advanced solution on the market for thermal
regulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can go to eightsleep.com
slash pump to check out the Pod Pro Cover, and you save $150 at checkout. They currently ship
within the United States, Canada, and the UK.
And I told you, it changed my life.
It helps me sleep deeper, helps me sleep longer.
I feel much more refreshed and I have better energy.
You wanna know how I have relentless energy
every single day?
It's because I sleep on an 8sleep.
Seriously, go check it out, 8sleep.com slash Pomp today.
Today's episode is sponsored by Abra.
They're based in California
and they're backed by top VC firms.
Abra is an all-in-one, simple, secure app
that allows you to trade over 110 cryptocurrencies,
Get 0% interest loans using your crypto as collateral and earn interest with up to 13% APY on stablecoins and 7.15% APY on Bitcoin.
You can join nearly 2 million users by downloading Abra from the Google Play or Apple App Store.
If you download the app today, you will get $15 in free crypto once you fund your account.
You came, you invested, now conquer.
Abra, conquer crypto.
Go check it out today.
Today's episode is brought to you by Fundrise.
You all know I believe that the best investors both understand and seek out extreme asymmetry.
Fundrise is here to help you do just that.
It's the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there,
giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals.
That's right.
Fundrise is making high-end private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use automated platform.
Its 1 million users already know that the investment with Fundrise is capable of producing
strong appreciation returns and income generation while helping to stabilize a diversified portfolio.
That's more important now than ever in our inflationary environment.
See for yourself how over 190,000 other investors have built a better portfolio with private real
estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to fundrise.com
slash pump today. And for a limited time, you'll get $10 when you place your first investment.
Again, that's fundrise.com slash Pomp.
Go check it out.
And when you make your first investment,
they'll give you $10 on top of it.
Fundrise.com slash Pomp.
All right, let's get in this episode.
I hope you guys enjoyed this one.
Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments.
All views of him and the guests on his podcast
are solely their opinions
and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments.
You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp
or his guests as a specific inducement
to make a particular investment
or follow a particular strategy.
but only as an expression of his personal opinion.
This podcast is for informational purposes only.
Good morning, everyone.
Bang, bang.
The invention of blockchain technology
solved a decades-long computer science problem
and unleashed a monetary revolution in the form of Bitcoin.
This decentralized digital currency
has taken the world by storm.
It has been adopted by hundreds of millions of people globally
and is worth approximately $1 trillion in market cap
based on daily fluctuations in US dollar price.
Not bad for a technology that is completely open source.
Bitcoin has no CEO, no marketing department, and raised no venture capital dollars as it was being
built or scaled. Decentralization means that no one individual or group controls the product.
Any major changes need the agreement of a large portion of the community, including software
developers to miners to node operators, in order to be implemented for users. As you can imagine,
the legacy system has watched the rise of Bitcoin with a combination of admiration and fear. Many of
traditional institutions, especially central banks, are impressed with the creation of truly
digital currency, along with how quickly people have adopted this technology in every economy.
These same people are watching in fear as they realize that their organizations have zero
control of the money supply in this new digital financial system. The control and production of
money has historically been reserved for central banks, but this monopoly on money is directly
tied to the central bank's close relationship with government. The government has a monopoly
on violence, so they are able to ensure that central banks will continue their singular
control and production of money. Any attempt to circumvent this central banking structure
has been met with a swift and ruthless response. This is why the decentralization of Bitcoin is
so important. Without a single point of failure, including a CEO or corporation or centralized
servers, there is a much smaller attack service for governments and their violent monopoly.
Since central banks are not relying on governments
to shut down this new entrant to the system,
central bankers have been forced to consider
how they can compete in the free market.
Central bankers aren't known for being innovative.
In fact, I would argue that central bankers are successful
because they move at a glacial pace
and make systemic bets on the world changing very slowly.
But Bitcoin has forced these institutions
to consider digitizing their fiat currencies
in a way that emulates Bitcoin's technology,
but contains some key differences.
Digitizing the dollar, the euro, the peso, or other fiat currencies is merely a technology upgrade.
The monetary policy of these fiat currencies are unchanged.
Similar to how physical currencies were transitioned to electronic Q-SIPS and centralized databases,
central banks are considering a technology upgrade to token-based fiat currencies that are compatible with digital wallets.
So why are they considering this transition?
The optimistic person would argue that the incorporation of new technology is an attempt
at modernization for an antiquated system. Individual users of central bank digital
currencies, CBDCs, would be able to send any amount of money 24-7, 365. The thought of hours
of operations would be a thing of the past. The payment rails that CBDCs would be built on would
be more efficient. Faster settlement times, cheaper transaction fees, and much more. Lastly, there
would be an increased transparency in the system, which theoretically could decrease crime and
increase the safety of the market. That is the positive perspective, but we have to be very
careful here. Central bank digital currencies will likely be one of the greatest violations
of human rights in history. Central bank digital currencies remove the privacy and decentralized
nature of physical cash. It creates an environment where central banks have complete control over
every aspect of a citizen's financial life. Here are a couple of examples of the nasty shit
that we can expect to see in the coming decades.
First, personalized inflation.
Central banks currently have the ability
to change or manipulate interest rates
and expand and contract the supply of money.
Any changes that they make
are applied to all citizens equally.
Individual market participants may make decisions
to benefit or suffer from these decisions.
But the dollars that I hold
are subject to the same monetary policy
as the dollars that you hold.
This is going to change with CBDCs.
The central bank will be able to personalize
the monetary policy to the individual.
Just as your newsfeed, search results, and music playlists are personalized based on vast amounts
of data, the same is coming to money. Maybe I get a higher inflation rate in an attempt to get me to
spend money, while you receive a lower inflation rate. The differentiation of monetary policy can
be cut a million ways, including where you live, who you are, your wealth status, your occupation,
your purchase history, and much more. The second point is around financial censorship.
Once a central bank digital currency is in the hands of a population,
the central bank has solidified complete control.
They will no longer have to go to the court system
to invoke emergency powers
to tell you who you can transact with.
This can all be implemented
through remote digital technologies.
These central bankers will be able to see
what is in your bank account,
who you transact with, what you purchase,
and anything else that you are curious about
in your financial life.
That full transparency with the state
removes all elements of privacy
while also giving the institutions
the ability to censor any and all transactions,
regardless of whether they have a legitimate reason or not.
The third point is around a social credit system.
When central banks and governments gain complete control
over the financial system,
they have the ability to reward or punish individual citizens
for the actions they take.
Have you been eating too much candy?
You can't buy candy anymore.
Have you been gambling?
Now you can't use public transportation
that heads in the direction of the casino.
This all sounds like crazy talk
until you realize that the Bank of England
England is openly talking about this in public right now. China already has a social credit
system in place. Canada is implementing one right now in real time. Are you fat? Only healthy food
can be purchased. Do you associate with people the central bank doesn't like? No entertainment
for you. This is a slippery slope that is approaching quickly. The fourth point is around
the expiration of money. If you're a central banker, you're constantly trying to incentivize
people to spend money in the economy so that you can increase the velocity of money. Without the
velocity of money, the system starts to break down. So what better way to increase velocity
of money than to have people's money expire if they don't spend it in a certain period of time?
The U.S. already has a version of this through SNAP benefits and EBT cards, where the money
expires one year after it is issued unless it has been used. The expectation is that the government
will expand this idea of expiration of money to include shorter timelines and a larger number
of programs in the future. These are just four examples of various activities that I anticipate
central banks will engage in once they are successful in creating and distributing central
bank digital currencies. As the saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely. The dream
of every dictator or authoritarian leader globally is to have full control over every aspect of their
citizens' lives. If the government can not only censor your financial transactions based on a
social credit system, but they can also personalize the monetary policy and give you money with an
expiration date, then we are headed to a dystopian future that no one will want to live in.
The basic human right is that we are all born free people. The creation of central bank digital
currencies will completely eliminate that premise. Every human born will be starting off in an
authoritarian state that requires them to be a digital slave to a central bank that has total
control over their life. If you don't have the freedom to transact, you don't have freedom.
Central bank digital currencies are the next frontier for the battle of freedom.
Every human should have the right
to financial privacy and independence.
This is an important conversation that must start now.
Without global awareness,
central banks will pull off the greatest violation
of human rights we've ever seen
and citizens will cheer them on while they do it.
Hope you have a great day.
I'll talk to everyone tomorrow.
Thanks so much for listening to today's episode.
I really hope you guys enjoyed this one.
Make sure you're subscribed on Apple, Spotify,
or your favorite podcast player.
And if you're looking to try to transition
to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry,
we've got you covered head over to palmscryptocourse.com we've developed a curriculum
with the top teams across the industry it's a three-week intensive training program with over
50 events packed into that three-week time period go to palmscryptocourse.com to learn more and i'll
meet you guys for the next episode
