It’s incredibly disappointing that the Department of Justice has denied my FOIA request and appeal. President Biden requested a report on how to create CBDC legislation, but the folks currently in charge have decided this information should be hidden from the public. The issue dates back to 2022 when President Biden placed “the highest urgency on research and development efforts into the potential design and deployment options of a United States CBDC.” As part of this effort, President Biden instructed the Department of Justice to put together an “assessment of whether legislative changes would be necessary to issue a United States CBDC.” Yet, the report never saw the light of day. When it became clear that the report wasn't going to be published, I submitted a FOIA request and members of Congress wrote to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Still, nothing. https://www.cato.org/blog/white-house-doj-keeps-cbdc-legislation-secret-cato-rep-hill-seek-answers I thought the change in administration might mean I would get the documents faster given how vocally opposed President Trump has been to CBDCs. Yet, instead, the request still ended in rejection. In explaining the rejection, the Department of Justice says releasing the information “would harm the interests” of the government. Given how the rise of CBDCs has increasingly become a public concern, the American people deserve to know what the Department of Justice and the White House think needs to be done to create a CBDC.

It is absolutely wrong for the New York Times to say a CBDC has "no risk of frozen funds." The Vietnamese government reportedly just froze 86 million accounts, the Russian government froze the accounts of Alexei Navalny and his allies, the Canadian government froze the accounts of the Freedom Convoy protests, the Nigerian government froze the accounts of people protesting policy brutality... Do I need to go on? And this is to say nothing of the fact that private providers often freeze accounts because they have been deputized as law enforcement.

#Bitaxe

"If you maintain nonviolent discipline, you'll exclusively win. You have 100,000 people in a nonviolent march, one idiot or agent-provocateur throwing a stone. Guess what takes all the cameras? That one guy. One single act of violence can literally destroy your movement." - Srdja Popovic

The ECB is now arguing that a CBDC is needed in case of power and network outages. How do they say it would help? 1. The infrastructure will have multiple servers 2. The CBDC will have a dedicated app 3. The CBDC might work offline This argument is far from compelling. At the risk of shocking the ECB, let me be clear: private businesses already use dedicated apps, multiple servers, and even *gasp* back up servers. In fact, offline payments might be tricky, but they are not impossible. Recognizing the value of connecting people in times of outages or disastors, the market has introduced solutions. You don't even need an internet connection to send bitcoin anymore. If you don't know what I mean, just check out all the work @calle is doing. Yet, even then, it's simply absurd for the ECB to suggest that the central bank must intervene to introduce alternatives. As George Selgin pointed out in 2018, central banks are just as vulnerable to outages, equipment failures, and hacking as others. https://www.cato.org/blog/computer-glitch-argument-central-bank-ecash History has shown that they too fall victim to these issues. Furthermore, as George noted, there are plenty of alternatives available. You can get multiple bank accounts, fintech apps, prepaid cards, cryptocurrencies, and more. And each one of these options has its own suite of subcategories. So the idea that central bank is needed to swoop in and introduce a long-missing alternative is too little too late. Arguements like the ECB's are why "a solution in search of a problem" has become the unofficial tag line for CBDCs.

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...

When discussing the CBDC, Belarusian central bank official Alexander Yegorov said that there were plans in place to use the CBDC to control the use of budgetary funds “where we can trace, down to the end individual, where budgetary funds were spent and ultimately reached.”

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...

Congress has once again brought the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network before it to answer fundamental questions. And once again, FinCEN is unable to justify the Bank Secrecy Act regime. https://www.cato.org/blog/how-many-arrests-were-made-fincen-director-doesnt-know The icing on the cake here is that FinCEN almost simultaneously announced it was expanding surveillance. It tried to surveil as little as $200, but the Institute for Justice took them to court. So now they are surveilling as little as $1,000 (as if that's a reasonable compromise).

In Reuters, Pierre Briancon writes that the central bank directly competing with private businesses is "a risk worth taking: a digital euro justifies knocking a few reluctant bankers’ heads." What benefit justifies incurring the risk? He never says. https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/time-put-digital-euro-ahead-bank-interests-2025-09-10/

I’m not sure what’s more ridiculous: the idea that showing this disclosure here is actually helpful or that someone had to pay money to have this disclosure shown.

Admittedly, I did not expect this year to include speaking before the European Parliament on debanking and CBDCs, but here I am.

Can we take a moment to talk about the digital bolívar in Venezuela? In early 2021, Nicolas Maduro briefly hinted that a “digital bolívar” would soon be part of an effort to digitize the Venezuelan economy. Many people took this statement to mean a CBDC was on the way. Later that year, the Banco Central de Venezuela seemed to confirm those suspicions when it announced the digital bolívar was indeed on the way along with a currency devaluation. Well… here it is. The “digital” bolívar. No, this is not a hyperrealistic AI-generated image of what a digital bolívar might look like. It really is a physical banknote. The only thing that's new is the devaluation so that 1,000,000 sovereign bolívars = 1 digital bolívar So, it’s not a CBDC by any means, but there is a side note to this story that unexpectedly captures just how absurd the Venezuelan monetary system has become. The central bank forced shops to post prices as both sovereign bolívars (Bs) and digital bolívars (Bs.D). Yet, there is a third label on prices that can also be seen in Venezuelan shops: REF. In short, this means to reference the dollar. For the fans of statistics, I probably don't need to point it out. However, “REF” is also the error code that Excel will display if a formula is broken. And frankly, this label could not be more fitting. Something is clearly broken if a central bank has launched a non-digital, digital currency denominated at 1/1,000,000th of its previously hyperinflated currency that was already on its second devaluation. As if this story were not enough, there’s also the tale of when Maduro introduced an actual digital currency called the “petro.” However, I'll leave that for another day. If you want to learn more about this story and other CBDC developments around the world, check out the @HRF CBDC Tracker.

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...

Efforts to slow or block the creation of a CBDC have received little support among congressional Democrats—even though the risks involved strike at the heart of core progressive values. Indeed, for a movement that has consistently fought against surveillance, discrimination, and the abuse of government power, CBDCs should raise especially sharp concerns. Thank you to @The Progressive Bitcoiner for letting me write a guest post.

The Progressive Bitcoiner

Central Bank Digital Currencies Clash with Progressive Values

Progressives—who have long fought to curb state overreach, surveillance, and discriminatory enforcement—should likewise fight to stop the rise ...

50 pages defending “CBDC privacy” summed up in 2 quotes: “This Article demystifies the exaggerated concern that a [CBDC] would serve as a tool for government surveillance, demonstrating instead that a [CBDC] can offer enhanced privacy protections through the examination of current technical designs.” “Of course, if a government or central bank intends to use a CBDC system for surveillance, they certainly have the capability to design it accordingly.” 🔗: https://www.hastingslawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/D-Article-Jiang.pdf

Who else should I be following on here?

Today marks the anniversary of President Nixon's 1971 decision to end the gold standard in the United States. I can't help but notice that the same appeals to "protect the dollar" here mirror what politicians now use to say we need a CBDC.

A "cashless economy is the preferred choice for the central bank." I mean... at least they are upfront about it. https://repositorio.banrep.gov.co/server/api/core/bitstreams/e74bc0c3-e866-4b31-a00d-3eebf8f83f03/content

Trump says banks discriminated against him and then says he thinks the source of the problem was the government itself. He's expected to sign an executive order about debanking this week.

CBDCs and stablecoins are not the same thing. It is correct that neither embodies truly open and free monetary technology, but the distinction is still important because only CBDCs give the government direct access and control over your financial activity by default. I explain at length in my latest article below. View article →

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

Everyone who uses money needs the digital euro? Wild take from Bloomberg. 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. https://www.cato.org/visual-feature/risks-of-cbdcs Check out the full piece in Bloomberg below. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-07-31/digital-euro-everyone-who-uses-money-needs-tech-forward-currency