Central Bank Digital Currency: Monetary Emancipation or Panopticon Technology?
Date: 17/5
Time: 6.30 for 7pm start (note the security will take about 30mins)
Location: House of Commons, Committee R’oom CR9
Introduction: John McDonnell MP
Chair: Eva Pascoe, Cybersalon.Org, co-editor of 22 Ideas About The Future
Speakers:
- Brett Scott, author of Cloud Money: cash, cards, crypto & the war for our wallets
- Simon Youel, Head of Policy & Advocacy at Positive Money
- Izabella Kaminska, Senior Finance Editor at Politico (former FT columnist)
- Paul Cockshott, economist, computer scientist & author of Towards A New Socialism.
The Bank of England has recently announced plans for the introduction of the Digital Pound: the British version of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
Across the world, other Central Banks are also progressing with the replacement of their nation’s physical notes and coins with encrypted software. Nigeria and Jamaica are already close to launching their own CBDCs. Not surprisingly, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) is at the forefront of this virtualisation of money. It has conducted limited trials of the digital yuan in selected cities since 2020, culminating with a large scale experiment during the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. The PBOC believes that its CBDC will soon be widely used for not only commercial transactions at home, but also cross-border trade.
Cybersalon’s event – introduced by John McDonnell – will discuss whether the Left should welcome or oppose the adoption of the Digital Pound and – if the former – what type of CBDC should created. So far, the Bank of England has avoided public debate on this important issue by claiming that the economic and technical ramifications of digital currency are too complex for non-specialists.
However, since everyone deals with money every day, the Left must insist that the views and needs of all sections of society have to inform the design of Britain’s new CBDC.
The advocates of CBDCs celebrate its potential to fix long-standing problems with the current monetary system, such as the costs of trading in physical money, the ease of thefts of notes and coins, the minority of people without bank accounts and the increasing power of card payment platforms. For Western countries, there is also the fear that lagging in this technical advance will allow China’s digital yuan to set the global standards for digital currencies.
In contrast, the critics of CBDCs emphasise its risks of exacerbating the most worrying tendencies within the digital economy, such as the 24/7 surveillance of everyday life, the risky dependence upon over complex systems, the forced adoption of new technologies and the costs of constant upgrades. Physical notes and coins are praised as a protection of individual autonomy against the predatory instincts of big government and big business.
What is often overlooked by both the boosters and doomsters is how CBDCs could profoundly transform the relationship between the Central Banks and the commercial banks, especially if monetary creation is increasingly monopolised by the former at the expense of the latter. This technical remaking of fiat currency might force a profound restructuring of the global financial system which is already under stress from deglobalisation and de-dollarisation. Even better for the Left, the ubiquitous adoption of CBDCs might provide the opportunity to realise the digital planning of national economies once predicted by Leonid Kantorovich and Oscar Lange.
By discussing both the positives and negatives of the Digital Pound, this event will challenge the monopolisation of this debate, opening it up beynd City bankers and Silicon Valley technocrats.
Limited space – please register here as we will need names for HoC security
