(OPINION) The quiet disappearance of cash is not a convenience story but a shift toward money that can be watched, frozen, and programmed—and most people, the author argues, will notice only after the exit is gone.
Writing onZeroHedge, Milan Adams of Preppgroup says the change is not arriving with a midnight law. It is arriving transaction by transaction. “We are not approaching a cashless society.
We are sleepwalking into it,” he writes. Central bank digital currencies—the digital euro, a possible digital dollar, and China’s already running digital yuan—are not just faster payments, he contends. They would recast the relationship between citizen and state so that every purchase is logged and every economic choice depends on permission.
Adams says this is written policy, not rumor. The Bank for International Settlements, which coordinates central banks, has said CBDCs will enable “programmable money”—currency that can be limited by time, place or purpose.
The European Central Bank’s digital euro plan would cap offline payments at small amounts; larger transfers would need a live network and identity checks. The Federal Reserve’s FedNow system, launched in July 2023, built the rails for instant digital payments that could later support a U.S. CBDC.