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Comment by spiralx | Hacker News Reader

How are CBDCs the "endgame for tyranny" in a way that (presumably) fiat currencies or cryptocurrencies aren't? Seems a bit hyperbolic, but maybe you have good reasons to be so alarmed.

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Not hyperbolic at all. CBDCs are a permissioned private ledger controlled by the central bank. The central bank controls what addresses are allowed to transact and have access to every transaction. If they dont like what you are spending your money on you are no longer allowed to transact. If they think you have too much money they can just take it.

https://youtu.be/UW9LbfuCTP0

As far as I'm aware CBDCs are a largely theoretical concept right now, do you have any links to an implementation such as you're describing? No videos please, I don't watch them.

A cursory google search on your part would have easily turned up web pages like these from the central bank of Canada:

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2020/02/contingency-planning-cen...

https://www.bankofcanada.ca/research/digital-currencies-and-...

Yes, I'm aware that they're an area of research in many countries, I was talking about actual projects that represent the "endgame of tyranny" as described above. The paper you've linked to talks about privacy and universal accessibility as core goals and I'm not sure whereabouts in this overview the tyranny is outlined - I'm sure you've read it and can point it out?

The issue is with accessibility, and raised by people who inherently mistrust the state, as the state can sort of cancel your participation in society if they so wish by revoking whatever authentication (digital ID) it has issued you to enable accessibility in the first place.

Now, why the state would do that, or why anyone would inherently mistrust the state, are open to discussion.

How is that in any way different than today's bank accounts, besides removing a largely useless intermediary ( a retail bank)?

Because the majority of people looking at the topic correlate the introduction of any sort of central bank digital currency with the introduction of efforts to curb the use of physical cash. India in particular had a recent change in their legal tender ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Indian_banknote_demonetis... ) which has made some people concerned about these sorts of moves. If you’re willing to suddenly (from the perspective of those aggrieved by the changes ) declare a significant percentage, over 75%, of the banknotes in circulation as soon to be defunct and basically “turn over” your entire currency over like a compost pile in under a year, people get understandably concerned you might just declare cash illegal entirely as the government has established itself as willing to do dramatic things.

It's different like this:

"Citizen, too much meat eating this week. Your CBDC non-cash is now suspended until you lose 10 pounds"

Because it allows them to enforce policies on where and how you spend your money. In an authoritarian regime this can be abused pretty badly.

Existing traditional bank accounts can absolutely be frozen or seized. Not sure what CBDCs can do that is harsher than that.

You can't ban someone from owning or using cash. But you can do so with a CBDC.

You can also dictate how the funds in a CBDC wallet are spent. There was a proposal that CBDC wallets could be issued stimulus funds that expire unless they are spent within a certain time frame. This is to prevent people from just putting the check into a savings account.

CBDC are just a huge/national bank. It's a dream come true for the Marxists.

As far as I'm aware CBDCs are a largely theoretical concept right now, do you have any links to an implementation such as you're describing?

https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.ht...

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