Bitcoin think tank says ‘No’ to CBDCs and lends credence to…

ambcrypto.com:

The Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) should be rejected, and in their place, the United States should look to Bitcoin (BTC) and stablecoins, according to the U.S. think tank Bitcoin Policy Institute.

Authors including former Kraken growth lead Dan Held and Texas Bitcoin Foundation executive director Natalie Smolenski Ph.D. contend that CBDCs will deprive the general public of financial autonomy, privacy, and freedom in a whitepaper published on 27 September.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has not yet decided whether or not to implement a CBDC or to examine the potential risks and advantages that may be associated with it.

The central bank published a discussion paper outlining the advantages and disadvantages of CBDCs but made no mention of its long-term objectives. 

According to a study, CBDCs can be used to facilitate cross-border payments, support the preservation of the U.S. dollar, ensure financial inclusion, and increase public access to central bank money. They are also free from credit and liquidity problems.

Smolenski and Held claimed that because government infrastructure is a “target of constant and escalating cyberattacks,” CBDCs would essentially “provide governments with direct access to every transaction […] conducted by any individual anywhere in the world.” They added that this could then be made available for “global perusal.”

A further claim made by the duo was that CBDCs will provide governments the ability to “prohibit, demand, disincentivize, incentivize, or reverse transactions, making them tools of financial censorship and control.” They noted,

“As a direct liability of central banks, CBDCs become a new vanguard for the imposition of monetary policy directly on consumers: such policies include, but are