Slightly embarrassed to admit this, but there was about 4.2 seconds where I thought this alert said there was a liquidity problem with lightning
Nick Anthony
EconWithNick@verified-nostr.com
npub1n2m8...gflr
Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute's Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and Fellow at the Human Rights Foundation. Covering CBDCs, financial privacy, and cryptocurrency. Opinions are my own.
Just look at the state of the negative reviews on the wallet app for Nigeria's CBDC...
Curious about the Bank Secrecy Act? Or maybe just curious about what
Norbert Michel and I talk about all day at Cato?
Today, we kicked off the Cato Institute's new podcast series by exploring the rise of financial surveillance and the illusion of financial privacy.
https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-podcast/illusion-financial-privacy
Dang! I just reached 200 subscribers on my Substack!
Thank you, everyone, for the support here. I was on the fence about starting this newsletter, but it's turned out to be a great way to get my work out there. 
A big thanks goes out to The Rage for featuring my latest piece. I'm excited to share that you'll be able to find more of my work here moving forward.
The Rage
Tracking CBDCs
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey revealed that, even after more than five years of CBDC development, he has yet to be convinced that CBDCs ar...
The ease of sharing long-form work on Nostr is unreal.
View article →
Cryptocurrency activity has jumped 530% in Bolivia amid rising inflation.
Dictators regularly use the financial system to target opposition. @gladstein says Bitcoin offers a lifeline: "It's money that dictators can't stop."
"Only about 13 percent of the world's population has access to a reserve currency, democracy, rule of law, and property rights." - @gladstein at the Bitcoin Policy Summit
"If you try to force people to adopt something they’re uneasy with, because they’re anxious about the power it would give you over them, the whole thing risks confirming the very concerns about coercion and control that touched off their resistance in the first place." - @Roger H
Human Rights Foundation
House money
Brendan Hasenstab & Roger Huang Why are countries around the world developing virtual legal tenders? Roger Huang on the origins, implementation, an...
Privacy is normal.
I'm excited to start sharing my long-form content here. To kick things off, here's a brief introduction to my latest paper explaining how the Federal Reserve (and the US government at large) has slowly taken over payment services.
View article →
If you're curious about how the Fed has routinely undermined the private sector for over 100 years, check out my latest paper with the Cato Institute.
https://www.cato.org/publications/reforming-federal-reserve-part-3-a-glance-at-interventions-in-payment-services
New study finds "more authoritarian jurisdictions have higher probabilities of developing and advancing their CBDC projects."
https://pureadmin.qub.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/634806467/Stablecoins.pdf
In other words, "We find that if we show people propaganda, they like the state more."
Maybe it’s just me, but seeing that the Bank of England can’t build a functioning menu bar doesn’t exactly inspire confidence for the digital pound.
Luckily, the @HRF CBDC Tracker has you covered if you want all the latest information.
CBDC Tracker
A CBDC is a digital national currency. In the case of the United States, a CBDC would be a digital form of the U.S. dollar whereas, in Nigeria, the...
"The problem with this widespread reporting, and the consequent surveillance that arises from it, is that there is little we can individually express without spending money." - L0la L33tz
The Rage
A Human Rights View On Finance
This article is part of a six-part educational series in cooperation between The Rage and the non-custodial, peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange Vexl.
"...
You can just build things.
For those who weren't there, here is my full talk from the Oslo Freedom Forum where I dug into the rise of CBDCs and the importance of building alternatives.
Bitcoin as it was intended: "Peer-to-peer, face-to-face, friend-to-friend" and no one in between.
Props to Lea and the whole Vexl crew for making the original mission of bitcoin (and financial privacy) easier for everyone to take part in.