When protests erupted after the 2020 election of Alexander Lukashenko, the government detained thousands.
In 2021, the government raided the offices of media outlets and froze the bank accounts of the Belarusian Association of Journalists.
In that same year, Lukashenko gave the central bank “the right to prohibit the sale and purchase of currency or impose a tax on it and confiscate dollars and euros from the accounts of legal entities.”
In 2023, news broke that the central bank was building a CBDC.
Find my latest with the @HRF below.
Human Rights Foundation
Tracking CBDCs before they track you
To their credit, the authors acknowledge that electronic payments are widely available.
So why? Why do people need a digital euro when they are already served by a wide array of options?
And there it is: Control.
The authors do well to be upfront about one risk of CBDCs. Although the only one they mention is the risk that a CBDC could undermine banks and so they propose restrictions on how much people can own.
However, there are many other risks at play with few benefits to justify the cost.
However, it's much more interesting to zoom in on the CBDC alone. Here we see something interesting. Look how abrupt these changes are.
It took some digging, but I was able to uncover that almost every one of these abrupt jumps was caused by the Bank of Jamaica giving away money at special events.
I was also able to uncover a similar pattern in The Bahamas.
In short, governments may build CBDCs, but that does not mean people will use them.
Reflecting on the lack of consumer adoption in 2024, Central Bank of The Bahamas Governor John Rolle said commercial banks would soon be forced to distribute the CBDC—suggesting a shift from incentives to mandates.
So whether by carrot or by stick, governments want their citizens to adopt CBDCs.
Yet the real question they should be asking is “What do our citizens want?” Based on the experience thus far, it’s not a CBDC.
He says the "financial industry just has too much power, and would never allow a public system to compete with its products."
Again, has he really not heard of FedNow? Or for that matter, the Fed's check and ACH services?
Frankly, it's also strange that Krugman criticizes concerns about CBDCs but makes no mention of the fact that Pix was forced on people. The government forced banks to adopt it.
For anyone interested in what's happening with Brazil's actual CBDC work. The HRF CBDC Tracker has you covered.
