Imagine a new type of cash…
Unlike the kind in your wallet, it’s never rolled off a printing press.
It exists only in cyberspace.
The government still issues it. But you spend it through an app on your phone.
And every transaction is recorded in a federal database.
This lets the government see not only what you’re buying… but also where you are when you’re making a purchase.
This new type of cash is called a central bank digital currency – or CBDC. It’s a fully digital version of cash that central banks issue and regulate.
And it’s replacing the currency system we know today.
Plans for this new kind of cash are already in place in more than 100 countries. They represent more than 95% of global GDP.
And the U.S. is one of them.
As colleague Teeka Tiwari has been spreading the word on… this month, the Fed is rolling out a new digital payments system to make this possible in America.
So, a U.S. dollar CBDC is a closer than most folks realize.
You can find out all the details from Teeka here. Below, I’ll pass on the two assets he recommends to protect your wealth.
First, it’s important you understand the threat CBDCs pose to your privacy… and your liberty.
So, let’s begin by looking back to a piece of almost forgotten history from the Soviet Union’s secret police, the KGB.
In 1971, the KGB investigated a new kind of surveillance system…
The top brass wanted to keep track of everyone inside the Soviet Union without them knowing about it.
So, they tasked a group of computer scientists and surveillance experts with figuring out something innovative.
The proposed solution was to eliminate physical cash… and replace it with a digital currency system.
Digital currency transactions must be recorded in databases. If you own the database, you can see everything stored there.
So, this system could gather data about your financial transactions – including every book you read, every magazine you subscribe to, and every political organization you donate to.
It could also flag where you were every time you made a transaction.
The KGB never built this system – physical cash lived on in the Soviet Union.
But the fact remains that it decided that you couldn’t do much better than digital-only cash if you wanted to build an unobtrusive surveillance system.
CBDC backers say they’ll have privacy protections built in…
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.
America’s spy agencies have made it part of their mission to digitally snoop on us.
In 2013, National Security Agency (“NSA”) contractor Edward Snowden made this clear in his leak of agency secrets to the press.
Among the documents he made public were top-secret slides about a digital surveillance program called Prism. Willing partners included Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, and Facebook.
You can see one of the slides below. It shows these companies were providing everything from email, to photos, to video and voice chats.
One of the top-secret slides Snowden made public
And as the Wall Street Journal reported last month, U.S. spy agencies buy vast quantities of our personal data – including from our cars, phones, and web browsers.
That’s bad enough.
In a world where CBDCs have replaced physical cash, we’re at risk of mass financial surveillance. Worse, this will be linked to the ability to punish us for our political or economic behavior.
We saw this in response to last year’s Freedom Convoy protest…
In January 2022, hundreds of truckers opposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates occupied downtown Ottawa.
In response, the Canadian government invoked emergency powers and froze protesters’ bank accounts.
By February, it said it had frozen at least 76 bank accounts linked to the protests representing $2.5 million.
Canada still has physical cash. So, the government couldn’t completely freeze the protestors out of the economy. With CBDCs, the feds could have prevented them from using cash as well as their bank cards.
All the government would have to do is shut down their digital wallets… and they’d be completely locked out of the economy.
Anti-vaccine mandate protests are just the tip of the iceberg…
Here’s how Teeka put it to our Palm Beach Research Group readers…
Right now, Washington is focused on the adoption of green energy. With a digital dollar, it could roll out a “green tax” on gasoline-powered cars. If you spent your CBDCs on gasoline, the government could take the tax straight from the wallet app on your phone.
The government could also get heavy handed with gun control. Teeka again…
Government officials could lock your digital cash from gun purchases. They’d simply say, “Sorry, you’ve passed the federal limit on how many guns you should own.” And then they’d take immediate action.
Think this sounds far-fetched? Look at today’s America. If I showed you 30 years ago what the government promotes today as “normal behavior,” would you have believed me?
The United States we knew 30 years ago is gone. If we’re not careful, the wealth we’ve worked hard for will no longer be ours to spend how we wish.
Luckily, there are two assets you can buy today to protect yourself…
Teeka says the simplest and most effective ways to opt out of this digital dollar is to buy bitcoin and gold.
Back to him for more on that…
The beauty of bitcoin is you hold it. You’re your own bank. Same goes for gold. You don’t need to trust a third party to store it for you. You can do that in a safe in your home.
Bitcoin and gold are also both “hard money.” You can’t produce more of them on a whim, like you can with the dollar and other fiat currencies. That makes them resistant to inflation.
The hard money alternative of the next generation is bitcoin, not gold. So, what I’ve been telling my readers is that bitcoin is the best choice. But if you’re a crypto skeptic… or you prefer something more tangible… then buy some physical gold.
So if you haven’t already, now is a good time to add some bitcoin and gold to your portfolio. These are two of the best ways to escape a CBDC system.
And there are other ways to profit from the seismic change coming to the money system. Teeka and his team have put together a new playbook to show you how. It includes…
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Teeka’s top stock recommendation for the digital-dollar age
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His favorite crypto play to profit from this monetary shift
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A way to 10x your money on gold
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A step-by-step guide to buying and storing your bitcoin
Regards,
Chris Lowe
Editor, The Daily Cut