If you asked a cypherpunk in the 1990s about their worst case for the future of money, they would probably have described something very close to Central Bank Digital Calmaces (CBDCS). The fight against financial surveillance was fundamental to Bitcoin’s early institives, and CBDCs go against everything they stand for: privacy, decentralization and individual sovereignty.
In “Cypherpunk Manifesto” (1993), Eric Hughes claimed that cryptography should protect individual freedoms, not a tool for centralized control. Bitcoin, born of concern over financial censorship and systemic instability, represents an alternative to traditional monetary systems. While central banks typically operate with a degree of independence from governments, CBDCs raise questions about economic privacy and the potential of increased state monitoring over transactions. As such, CBDCs are the antithesis of Bitcoin.
CBDCs adopted and tested worldwide have been marketed as a tool for financial inclusion. But for most Bitcoiners, they are a Trojan horse to reinforce state control rather than giving individuals genuine financial ownership. They represent the exact kind of big brother system that Cypherpunks struggled to prevent.
Therefore, Adam is back-one of the most influential figures in Bitcoin, the inventor of hashcash and the founder of the Blockstream Vocal vocals about the dangers of CBDCs and the role of World Economic Forum’s (WEF) to promote them. He sees this for what it is: a power play of global elites, many of which either misunderstand or actively are against-bitcoin. If Bitcoin was designed to take control away from the state, CBDCs are designed to return it.
According to Back, a speaker of consensus Hong Kong, CBDCs did not emerge as a natural development of money; They were a reactionary feature of regulators-a panic response to the threat of digital currency in the private sector. He pointed to Facebook’s weight as the moment that freaked central banks when we caught a chat on Google meetings.
“Supervisors saw that a company with a billion plus users could launch electronic cash in the companies and they realized they could lose control. So they tried to get ahead of it with their own government’s electronic cash,” said back. “But the problem is, it is systemically impossible for them to create something that the average person wants to use because they have such control -oriented ideas.”
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Back not only criticizes CBDCs in theory; He actively builds an alternative. In the past year, Blockstream has launched the Jade Plus-Hardware-Wing Book-a Bitcoin-Kun Hardware-Watching Book designed for privacy-conscious users offering an open source alternative to Ledger and Trezor-and Greenlight, a non-parenting authority. -Service -Platform that simplifies Bitcoin payments for developers.
Blockstream has also expanded Bitcoin’s financial infrastructure with new institutional investment funds offering regulated Bitcoin-based financial products to investors with high net value. They also promote LAG 2 scaling solutions through the liquid network, a Bitcoin sidingkin that enables faster and confidential transactions. These initiatives are based on Blockstream’s long-standing satellite network, which allows Bitcoin transactions without Internet access, and its mining that strengthens decentralization.
Together, they reflect a clear vision: a Bitcoin-based financial system independently of traditional banks and centralized authorities.
Some may claim that state’s commitment to Bitcoin is a growing concern. With Bitcoin ETFs getting traction, discussions about an American strategic Bitcoin reserve and institutions that store the asset, is there no risk that governments and large units will get centralized control over Bitcoin? Isn’t individual self -insurance and self -sleeping all the point?
Back, a British cryptographer aged 54 remains, speaking with a quiet humility that burdens his influence, not bound. Moistened. Happy. In his course. Focused. Flowering.
“ETFs and other investment products built around Bitcoin just give people a simpler way to start,” he said with the cool decision of a man on a mission.
“Hopefully they take some physical bitcoin later and learn to store it. What means the case today – the majority of it is in individual ownership, some in cold storage, some in exchanges and similar things.”
While it is difficult to predict exactly how the balance between self -insurance and institutional holdings will change over time, believes the wider trend is clear.
He has been involved in Bitcoin long enough to see how adoption plays out. His well-documented email exchanges with Satoshi Nakamoto suggest he might understand Bitcoin’s orbit better than anyone else. The way he sees it, Bitcoin’s top-of-the-funk is expanded. Of course, ETFs and institutional foundations bring Bitcoin into mainstream, but in the end it just means more people will be drawn into the Bitcoin network. At its core, Bitcoin stays opt-in, censorship resistant and free of government interference. CBDCs are the opposite.
Currently, 44 countries are at the CBDC pilot stage, according to a Tracker from Atlantic Council. Some claim to preserve privacy, but the reality is that this is poorly blurred efforts to maintain centralized power over money. For a while, the pressure on state-sponsored digital currencies seemed inevitable-to-to-political opposition in the United States made it a battlefield question. By reflecting the sharp Republican turn against CBDCs in the past 18 months, Trump recently announced he would ban the development of CBDCs in the United States
Back, this points out as a sign that the tide is changing in favor of Bitcoin. “A number of people in the Trump cabinet are Bitcoin enthusiasts with relevant experience, so maybe we will see an improvement because it is partly the participants to date that would probably have preferred Bitcoin did not exist,” he said.
He referred to former SEC chairman Gary Gensler, who, despite his background, taught blockchain at MIT, took an aggressive attitude against the industry. “Hopefully, there will be some more common sense and forward -looking rules and recognition of individual rights to self -conformity,” said back.
Financial surveillance
For back, he doesn’t just want Bitcoin to win, he wants CBDCs to die. And he believes that CBDCs are not just a monetary question – they are part of a wider agenda for financial surveillance, social credit systems and state control. “The interference on social media by elections in the United States and expressions of interest in CBDCs in Europe, where they are clearly envious of Chinese social credit results and similar things that are very dystopian, some of the things wef has come up with. .
In particular, WEF has placed the charge on CBDCs and other centralized control mechanisms. “I mean, they have generally been for all kinds of illiberal things like CBDCs and loss of individual men by force. I mean, they will come out with sample balloons that just sound terrible and then delete their own tweets.”
He is not wrong. WEF has a history of fluid controversial ideas and scrubs them when setbacks hit. As only one example, they tweeted in 2021 that the pandemic “quietly improved cities” by reducing air pollution. The proposal that Lockdowns was a net positive for the environment was met with indignation, so wef deleted the tweet.
Blockstream is aiming for individuals and institutions with high net worth does not want their assets to be trapped in a WEF-approved CBDC system controlled by centralized devices. Therefore, they have launched a package of Bitcoin funds in institutional quality designed for those who want to preserve their wealth in a system that cannot be manipulated arbitrarily. The recent events have only reinforced why this means so much. The collapse of FTX, Celsius and other cryptic companies in 2022 has further eroded confidence in centralized institutions, whether in traditional finance or crypto.
Back, however, is nothing like Sam Bankman-Fred, the disgraceful FTX founder who used a little too individual privacy and was proud anti-decentralization. He is also not something like Alex Mashinsky, Celsius CEO, who carelessly gambler with user funds. Back is a cypherpunk that continues to perform on the master plan to make sure Bitcoin is rolled out exactly as Satoshi intended: as a decentralized, trustless and censorous monetary network.
For him, this is more than just a match between Bitcoin and CBDCs. It’s about freedom. “It’s a Renaissance for Cypherpunk thinking,” told me back, explaining that once people are drawn into Bitcoin, they begin to understand its deeper implications and they see what it means for privacy, sovereignty and control. He added that when the original cypherpunk manifest was written in the 1990s, its authors may not have fully expected how deeply digital technology would eventually permeate all aspects of our lives.
“So in a way [Manifesto’s] Concerns are even more urgent now because everything is online, ”he said, laser eyes flashing.
