#841 Central Bank Digital Currencies Will Be A Violation Of Human Rights

This 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 =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  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

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  market for thermal regulation. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking. You can go to eightsleep.com/pomp to check out the Pod Pro Cover and you save $150 at checkout. They currently ship within the United States, Canada, and the UK. Now 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 want to know how I have relentless energy every single day? Because I sleep on an Eight Sleep. Seriously, go check it out, eightsleep.com/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%

• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

  APY on stable coins 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.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  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/pomp today, and for a limited time, you'll get $10 when you place your first investment. Again, that's fundrise.com/pomp. Go check it out, and when you make your first investment, they'll give you $10 on top of it. Fundrise.com/pomp.

• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, let's get into this episode. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  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.

• 3:21Anthony Pompliano?

  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

• 4:03Anthony Pompliano?

  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 the 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.

• 4:46Anthony Pompliano?

  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 surface 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

• 5:30Anthony Pompliano?

  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 QCIPS 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.

• 6:13Anthony Pompliano?

  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.

• 7:00Anthony Pompliano?

  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 news feed, 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

• 7:42Anthony Pompliano?

  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.

• 8:26Anthony Pompliano?

  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 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.

• 9:11Anthony Pompliano?

  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 US 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

• 9:53Anthony Pompliano?

  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.

• 10:37Anthony Pompliano?

  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 have ever seen, and citizens will cheer them on while they do it. Hope you have a great day, and 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 subscribe 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 pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry.

• 11:22Anthony Pompliano?

  It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more, and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.