"The appropriate degree of anonymity in a CBDC system is a political and social question, rather than a narrow technical question. As discussed above, CBDC would need to be compliant with AML regulations, which rules out truly anonymous payments."

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/paper/2020/central-bank-digital-currency-opportunities-challenges-and-design.pdf

I find it extremely depressing just how consistent this line of thinking is in CBDC discourse.

Existing money-laundering and counter-terrorism laws are not some higher-order political and social commitment that must be genuflected towards and kept inviolate prior to any debate

over the future of digital fiat currency. To the contrary, they are merely one set of political and social considerations that can and should be weighed against others, for example the broader societal implications of transitioning to a purely (or nearly-comprehensively) digital

payments system in which the possibility of anonymous payments is entirely precluded.

Such a shift represents a massive, and I would argue, extreme shift in the existing (already tenuous) balance privacy and civil liberties, and national security and criminal law enforcement.

Whats more, such a shift that has profound second-order implications for broader debates over surveillance capitalism, digital authoritarianism, political dissent, and digital systems architecture, to name just a few.

We have watched over the past 20 years the accretion of ever

more draconian and unaccountable state power, much of which was introduced in the name of "anti-crime" or "anti-terrorism" but quickly spread out as general tools of social regulation and control, often against the poorest and most vulnerable demographics.

These laws were pushed

on us by the same actors who led us into multiple unjustifiable wars, who lied about conducting illegal mass surveillance, who punished whistleblowers, who failed to jail true villains like banksters and fossil fuel executives because they were prominent campaign donors, who

continue to staunchly oppose basic social welfare and economic rights initiatives while professing to care about the poor and working class, and who general have contempt towards the interests of large social movements.

Why do we take them at their word when they assert the need

to be able to see everyone's transactions, all the time, forever? Are we really so gullible to believe that the same people that could end the practice of off-shore tax havens tomorrow but choose not to, who give the US military budget tens of billions more than it even asks for

but then cries poor when it comes to saving the planet or sick people, that these people get up every day worried about how to best prevent financial crime and pursue world peace?

The messaging consistency by which policymakers discount the viability of genuinely anonymous

digital public money in the name of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism needs to be called out for what it is: political propaganda. It's certainly not a technical argument, and it rarely even bothers to articulate the underlying political argument, yet alone defend it.

Instead, what we get is a campaign of relentless repetition, where as long as enough voices loudly proclaim "oh, well we can't have *that*" enough times, everyone will just accept it and move on, without stopping to consider just how much freedom and social power they're leaving

on the table.

It's dangerous, sinister, and socially harmful.

We should stop allowing it to happen.

/endrant

@TheStalwart @tracyalloway @DavidBeckworth @francesca_bria @PositiveMoneyUK