My guest today is Nick Anthony, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a fellow at HRF, and one of the clearest voices dissecting CBDCs, financial privacy, and government overreach. He authored the book “digital currency or digital control?” and advocates for freedom and privacy. In this episode, we explore how governments use propaganda to sell CBDCs as “digital cash,” despite public resistance, and how pilots in China and The Bahamas reveal low adoption and rising coercion. Nick explains why control is a universal temptation across democracies and autocracies, and how the Bank Secrecy Act created 55 years of normalized financial monitoring in the United States. We discuss the distinction between stablecoins and CBDCs, the slow global rollout of digital currencies, and why Bitcoin’s censorship resistance remains essential, alongside other freedom tech tools. He also shares insights from his work maintaining HRF’s CBDC Tracker, his visit to the European Parliament, and his warning that even if CBDCs fail, today’s financial system already operates as a surveillance regime.
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-- LINKS –
Nick’s Twitter: https://x.com/EconWithNick
Cato Institute Twitter: https://x.com/CatoInstitute
HRF’s CBDC Tracker: https://cbdctracker.hrf.org/home
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-- CHAPTERS –
00:00 - Coming Up…
01:39 - Meet Nick Anthony: Policy Analyst & CBDC Critic
03:03 - What Problems CBDC Pretends to Solve?
04:48 - CBDCs: Problems and Propaganda
08:03 - Real-World Examples: China & The Bahamas
13:59 - Ad Break: Trezor, BitVault & Abundant Mines
16:39 - Stablecoins vs. CBDCs: A Critical Comparison
21:56 - The Future of CBDCs, And Bitcoin's Role
24:13 - Financial Privacy, Bitcoin and Cash
31:54 - Message to CBDC Legislators
33:08 - Nick’s Visit to the EU Parliament
35:08 - How To Explain Why We Need An Exit
36:53 - Wholesale vs. Retail CBDCs