CBDCs arrive
Watching crypto grow outside their control, more than 130 central banks began building digital versions of their own currencies. China launched the digital yuan in 2020. The ECB moved the digital euro into a preparation phase in 2023. Programmable state money is no longer hypothetical.
A CBDC is not the same as cash digitized. It is a liability of the central bank that can, in principle, be issued with conditions — expiring if unused, restricted by recipient, frozen by policy. That is a tool of monetary control the world has never had before.
07 · Crypto & Digital Fiat
Bitcoin proposed something new: money whose supply rules are enforced by mathematics rather than by a sovereign. Within fifteen years, crypto had become a $2T+ asset class and triggered central banks to build their own digital currencies. For the first time since the invention of coinage, the question of who issues money is genuinely open.
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