It'll also give the government the ability to add conditions to your money (ie. you need to spend X amount of yen / dollars this month or your money will expire and you'll lose it), or your money can only be spent at approved stores.
They can already take all your money. They can take it no matter what form you put it n in.
tell that to criminals and money launderers!
Some of China’s experiments with digital RMB have already done this where the money they handed out had an expiration date. Japan as well with the GoToTravel/GoToEat stimulus campaigns where the money equivalent could only be used at certain hotels/restaurants.
The idea that a government or bank would expire your money is pretty hilarious.
https://www.google.com/search?q=cbdc+expire
It doesnt take much knowledge of history to know that giving government full control over individual's money is a very bad idea.
And governments already have full control over an individual's money.
The point of many CBDC electronic currencies is to reduce the barriers to this control, so restrictions on currency (such as expiring currency) can be implemented with a few keystrokes on a computer rather than, say, requiring everyone to turn in their cash and jewelry.
> winners have until January 17 to spend their e-yuan before it expires
The caveat there is that expiration in this case is probably to encourage winners to spend the money/provide an end date to the experiment. Most likely regular e-money would not have that condition but special payments (ex: stimulus) could.
c.f. speed of yuan CBDC rollout; https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2021/11/08/central...
c.f. central banks salivating at the prospect of having extra levers to pull: https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2021/02/16/...
> An impediment to negative interest rates at the moment is that savers can switch to cash, which has a de facto interest rate of zero. In a cashless world central banks could in theory programme digital currency to have negative rates.
> Once ascendant, govcoins could become panopticons for the state to control citizens: think of instant e-fines for bad behaviour.