This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 13th, 2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Many Central Banks are exploring the possibility of developing a central bank digital currency or

CBDC. To be clear it's not just digital money, it's digital money that can be

programmed by central authorities to only be useful for this or that, it's digital

money that can be easily tracked through the financial system, and it's digital money that

can be turned off for highly specific users. I spoke with Cato's Nick Anthony about the relevant

case of the rollout of CBDCs in Nigeria and the chaos that has since ensued.

In the last couple of years I've had a lot of conversations about CBDC's,

Central Bank digital currencies, and they've been presented largely just as an idea,

something that was just past the horizon.

And things have changed very dramatically

in just the last couple of years.

And when I spoke with you, I've spoken with Will Luther about

Central Bank digital currencies and sort of the risks that they pose and the fact that,

for lack of a better term, global technocrats are sort of tapping their fingers together excitedly thinking about, oh look at all the ways that we can help people when I put that in scare

air quotes it it has been dramatic the the shift that has occurred in a short period of time so putting

as friendly a face on it what did Nigeria try to do with their Central Bank digital currency? And we should note Nigeria

is a huge country in terms of population.

Yes, we're talking about a country with about 200 million people and the Central Bank decided that it wanted to

roll out a Central Bank digital currency of CBDC and the uptick wasn't

very good.

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