CBDCs and defying digital control

Shawn Yeager kicks off Season 2 of Trust Revolution with Nick Anthony, policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and fellow at the Human Rights Foundation, leading their CBDC Tracker. They dive into the escalating risks of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), which supercharge government surveillance beyond laws like the Bank Secrecy Act. Nick, author of Digital Currency or Digital Control, traces the 2019 CBDC surge to Facebook’s Libra and flags authoritarian regimes as frontrunners. Learn why financial privacy hangs by a thread and how Bitcoin could be the lifeline.

Having conversations about CBDCs is so important. If people don't know, then it's just going to happen without our say.

— Nicholas Anthony

Timestamps

  • 00:00 Introduction: Kicking off Season 2
  • 04:30 Nick's path from Cato to HRF CBDC Tracker
  • 10:15 What is a CBDC and why 2019 sparked the surge
  • 16:45 China's digital yuan: Surveillance state prototype
  • 23:20 Bank Secrecy Act: How financial surveillance became law
  • 30:00 Canadian trucker protest: Banks as enforcement arm
  • 37:30 Authoritarian regimes as CBDC frontrunners
  • 44:15 Privacy-preserving alternatives: Cash and Bitcoin
  • 51:00 The political landscape for financial privacy
  • 57:18 Why this conversation matters now

Resources

About Nicholas Anthony

Nick Anthony is a policy analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and a fellow at the Human Rights Foundation, where he leads the global CBDC Tracker monitoring 139 jurisdictions. Author of Digital Currency or Digital Control, he focuses on the threats posed by centralized financial systems and advocates for decentralized alternatives like Bitcoin to protect individual privacy and freedom.

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