Happy Hump Day!

Weve just had a typhoon run through the Phils again. I love big, theatrical storms where the damage is minimal.

Its still overcast here. Though I love when the sun isnt roasting my bald head, the gray pall, unfortunately, fits perfectly with this somewhat dystopian piece.

Lets have a chinwag

Central Bank Digital Currencies: Whats in Your Wallet?

Old friend and Rude reader Trav sent me an interesting email yesterday that I almost dismissed offhandedly.

When you've been a right-libertarian for many years, youre naturally ahead of the curve as libertarians are a vigilant, fearful, pessimistic bunch.

Many arguments, caveats, and banana peels they saw coming decades ago are now just entering the mainstream.

Travis sent me this Doomberg article, which talks about the impending USD digitalization.

Doomberg earlier said Powell was done at the Fed, a hypothesis George Gammon agrees with.

Powells would-be departure is due in no small part to Fed apparatchiks wanting to introduce a digital currency, an idea to which Powell is lukewarm.

Libertarians for ages have hated all sorts of elimination of cash or central bank digital currencies, because governments could just turn off wallets.

This is not a far-fetched scenario, as only four months ago, the Bank of England asked ministers to intervene in digital currency programming.

The digital currency can then be programmed to be spent only on essentials or items the government or employer (GASP!) thinks are sensible.

This is an affront to anyone who knows civilization was built on the foundation of private property rights.

Whats Yours is Mine

Think about these things:

If the government knows that you got caught driving while intoxicated once, are you ever going to be able to buy alcohol again with your central bank-issued digital currency?

If you ever abused prescription drugs before, will you be able to buy them later on, even if you're completely over it, with your central bank digital currency?

Are you ever going to be able to purchase marijuana?

Are you ever going to be able to do anything that you want with your own money?

This is an assault on private property.

A government would be able to turn off your medium of exchange, thereby prohibiting you from buying what you want.

Your wealth is the sum of your lifetimes income minus all the costs. Your money is all about how you wield your wealth.

I have been privy to these arguments forever.

One Ring to Rule Them All

Thorsten Polleit, an excellent German economist of the Austrian School, has called the impending central bank digital currencies, "The one ring to rule them all."

From Polleits speech at the Property and Freedom Conference this year:

However, the One Ring of power stands for the particularly evil idea of creating a state of states, a world government, a world state; and the creation of a single world fiat currency controlled by the states would pave the way toward this outcome.

Knowing the globalizers inside the UN, the IMF, the World Bank, Washington, London, (Despite Brexit!), and the European Union, you could see that as an endpoint.

What if one government sticks a prohibition on you? Will you even be able to, say, book a plane flight?

Will you be able to put your digital currency in whatever bank in the world?

And if you stick it in the bank, will your home government monitor your transactions from afar?

We can see that the IRS wants to monitor all bank transactions over $600.

We've also just seen via Bloomberg that China has ordered HSBC, Manulife, and AIA to prohibit withdrawals for Hong Kongers leaving the territory to resettle in England.

On the surface, thats because they have British national overseas passports, and the Chinese government doesn't recognize them.

But the real reason is they dont want billions of dollars withdrawn in Hong Kong and deposited in London.

This was another thing libertarians were way out ahead on the curve. Because what happens when Social Security genuinely runs out of money and can't print anymore?

They're going to start seizing retirement accounts, which is why I smartly put mine offshore years ago.

If you can do that, I encourage you to do so.

You never, ever know when that day is going to come, and in the great words of Andrew Henderson of Nomad Capitalist, "You'd rather be three years early than one day late."

What About Cryptocurrencies?

This only bolsters the argument for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ether, which are beyond government control.

Again, the arguments that Bitcoiners put forward 12 years ago no longer seem fanciful, even to the mainstream.

Thats because government actions speak for themselves.

This is just yet another reason why at least part of your portfolio should be in cryptocurrencies, because when the rush to buy cryptos genuinely happens, crypto will roof it.

Were still in the early adopter stage, so you have some time.

Bitcoin and Ethereum lead the way now, although who knows what'll happen with these newer digital currencies coming up?

Friedrich Hayek was a proponent of the denationalization of money and putting money in the hands of where it should be, which is the market.

Money is subject to the laws of supply and demand, just like everything else, and should be out of government hands.

Of course, everyone alive today has not lived through a regime where the government did not control money, so that's an entirely foreign concept.

Unfortunately, far from denationalizing money, we seem to be going in the complete opposite direction, where governments will be able to control every purchase that we make.

Its paramount if you value your freedom, you avoid this scenario at all costs.

So prepare yourself, start looking at crypto, start getting your pension offshore, if it isn't offshore already, and beware of what your government is doing in terms of digitalizing its currency.

Sorry for the grave tidings, but the utopian future governments promise us seem quite dystopian.

Have a great day.

All the best,

Sean