This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Tuesday, February 27th, 2024.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The push for an American-style Central Bank digital currency continues, but not without new vocal opposition from some

Republican candidates for the White House. States are now making note of the possibility of a

programmable currency in their uniform commercial codes.

Cato's Nick Anthony provides an update.

Careful listeners of the Cato Daily Podcast will no doubt be aware of Central Bank digital currencies and the fact that our friend

Nicholas Anthony has been tracking CBDCs for a few years now.

And so if you don't mind for listeners that are new

to the Cato Daily Podcast, welcome, first of all.

But tell them what is the CBDC? What does it empower? What does it prevent? And why is it a such a fundamentally different thing than for for example, a US dollar.

At just the base level, a central bank digital currency

or a CBDC is a national digital currency.

And like cash, that would be a direct liability of the Federal Reserve,

our Central Bank, but it is not the digital equivalent of cash.

It is fundamentally different because it establishes a direct connection between you as a citizen and the federal government.

It establishes that direct connection which removes the privacy we experience with cash and also removes the finality that we experience with cash because someone is observing the transaction and someone can undo it.

And I often come on this show and talk about in my work here at the

Cato Institute that we do not have financial privacy in the traditional

system because so many of our transactions are reported for being over

$10,000 or for being suspicious or the like, but the difference here in terms of privacy

is that by having that direct connection between you and

...