Transcript of the above video:

Much to my surprise, I found that two things that I have not particularly liked the past few years, two subjects if you will, seem to have kind of come together in a confluence of circumstances, so anecdotally I will just relay. Last week, not once but twice last week, I was put in a position where an individual here in Thailand did not want cash. It all happened on the same day last week and the first time it happened, I was walking outside of my house and I came upon a homeless person and I offered them some money and they literally started talking to the vendor next to them, telling me to give it to them because I guess it was going to be transferred back over to them in some cashless Prompt Pay something and I wasn't really getting the gist of it, I was just trying to hand this person money quickly and move along and they tried to turn it into this big procedure and they kept saying "COVID, oh, mai ow", I don't want the cash because of COVID.” This was the most insane thing I had ever heard especially knowing now what we know which is going back 3 years, most of what came up were large exaggerations and then all of this misinformation out in the ether of the internet. For example, I remember talking about "well COVID can survive on surfaces," turned out to not be true. "COVID can survive in sunlight," turned out to not really be true, a lot of that kind of stuff. Look, I am not a physician. You can go look up what COVID is. Is it some existential threat? No, it is not, at the end of the day. Was it something that came up that we had never seen before or were very unfamiliar with going back into quarter 1of 2020? Yes. Was there good cause perhaps although now that we know more about the people involved with testing of such viruses begs the question, but was there anything unreasonable about regular old people just saying "hey look, maybe we should take some precautions." No. But should it have led to a massive shutdown of our economies and all of the craziness and quite honestly Orwellian protocols that then came down thereafter? Not really. I think history has borne that out. Then on top of it, we saw all kinds of things that I had read about previously mostly in white papers from some of the same people that ended up administering the COVID response but I remember talking to people prior to COVID and even I thought the notion of "vaccine passports" was absolutely insane, that would never happen. Well lo and behold we got all that fun stuff. Now it seems COVID again, one homeless person didn't want to take cash from me the other day citing COVID. Then I get over to a fast food restaurant, here, I thought about naming them, I am not going to do that; we don't do that on this channel but suffice it to say would all know who they are. I got over there and I had a card but I had cash and I was wanting to pay cash and they said "oh no, no cash" which is nonsense because it is legal tender, so yes cash! the answer to that is "yes, but they said "no" and then I asked why and they said "oh COVID!"  Well I find it really interesting that COVID is being used as this pretext seemingly and it seems to have gotten into the minds, I hesitate to use the word "brainwashing" but I mean it begs the question, I will leave it at that. Long story short, it seems to have gotten into everybody's head that somehow cash is inherently dirty and yes money has always been dirty. I have worked in a casino for years. Every time I took a break I had to go in and wash my hands like I was prepping for surgery!  I mean yeah, it's dirty but it is not the end of the world and it's not an existential threat to humanity. We have been using currency for how many hundreds of years and it hasn't really been a problem. You want to go to a really effective sterile form of currency, go back to precious metals, silver and gold, nothing can live on them, on the metal itself. So again, if that was your concern, you would be looking at precious metals more than some digital currency. But that's the thing, isn't it?  It's hard to get away from the fact that it seems like there seems to be a concerted push to get us to go cashless and all of this seems inextricably linked to all sorts of Orwellian scenarios.

So, with that in mind, I am going to go ahead. I thought of making this video initially after reading a recent article for the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Pheu Thai reaffirms digital wallet scheme will go ahead. And as we discussed in other videos, I love how they just, "well we are doing it!" and it is like yeah you are taking the country into massive debt for something that none of us are clamouring for particularly but that will then create a massive level of surveillance associated with day-to-day economic transactions. I have got serious qualms about this suffice it to say, if it is not readily apparent. That said, quoting directly: "She," (and she is Treechada Srithada a deputy Pheu Thai spokeswoman), so quoting directly: "She refuted the criticism that the governing party was simply being obstinate about the mass handout, and said a team of experts had thoroughly studied its feasibility before it introducing it as one of the parties core policies to stimulate the economy." So I love how they initially say, Well we are not being obstinate but we are just going to do it!", it sounds a little obstinate. Then they go on and say "a team of experts has thoroughly studied it". So! I actually thought of titling this: A team of experts said it is cool, so yeah! I mean, what does that mean "team of experts"? As we discussed in a prior video, critical again of the same issue, 120 scholars have come out and said that our problems with this. What are we doing? I don't understand this kind of gung-ho attitude even in light of really reasonable concerns I think by just regular people and also the nation that will be going into further debt namely 10% of debt-to-GDP ratio going up as a result, and then what”? What do we get? As we discussed in the other video, we get a bunch of "money created from thin air” that is not backed by anything of value that then gets in this multiplier effect, ie. the velocity; it moves around the system thereby creating taxable events so you can tax the population more even though no value has actually been created. We have discussed this in the other video. So again, I question even the need for this.

That said, are there any case studies out there that would show us a little bit about what this might look like? Well, indeed that are. Quoting from Cornell University, that is business.cornell.edu, the title is: Nigeria's eNaira CBDC: What Went Wrong? Quoting directly: "The eNaira, Nigeria's Central Bank digital currency was released over a year ago to widespread interest. However, as of October 2022, it barely had any usage within a country full of crypto-curious investors, even as paper Naira notes are in short supply." Quoting further: "A recent article even claims that the Nigerian Government is looking for help to redesign and relaunch the digital currency. While the implementation of the eNaira gets many things right," (okay!), "it fails to capitalize on many of the real benefits of blockchain technology, which is probably why it continues to have low usage and popularity." As we will get into, people just didn't like it I like it, that's why it had low usage of popularity. Quoting further: "The eNaira is built on top of the Hyperledger Fabric blockchain protocol, which is an open-source project started by the Linux Foundation. The eNaira project has implemented this as a private blockchain network." (Notable there - private blockchain network - they control the money privately.) "Instead of the public crypto projects that people are familiar with, eNaira nodes will only be run by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and its trusted parties.  Wallet Apps", (sound familiar? Digital wallet) "wallet apps will then connect to these nodes to interface with the blockchain network." (A private blockchain network notably; that seems to be not necessarily fully transparent) "while the nodes themselves will be used to maintain the blockchain protocol, validating new blocks and running transactions." 

So, when I read that, the first thing I thought is, okay so the block chain itself is private, so they keep that under lock and key, but your data associated with your transactions are on their open ledger for them to see whenever they want. I find that rather interesting. So on top of this article, I came across another article in Coin Desk, that is coindesk.com, the article is titled:  Nigerians' Rejection of Their CBDC Is a Cautionary Tale for Other Countries. Thailand perhaps we should heed the caution. Quoting directly, again coindesk.com, "Nigerians are protesting the African country's digital currency and demanding renewed access to paper money despite Government incentives." So regardless of handouts and things, the Nigerians are saying "we don't want this, we want privacy in our economic transactions. We just want to do business like we have always done business up to now. Quoting further: "Further, CBDCs really don't add anything novel to the market in terms of benefits for consumers." That is exactly what I have been thinking this whole time, since we have been talking about this whole handout scheme here in Thailand is, "what exactly is added here? Other than a ton of surveillance for the state and a ton of debt for the nation, what is being added? Where is the value add to Thailand's economy by even having this? Because let's be honest. We have the ability to digitally transfer money as it is. “There is PayPal which has come under increased Government regulation and tax scrutiny here in Thailand. But there is PayPal, the banking apps are great here. I mean online banking is quite easy to use in Thailand. I don't see the pressing need for this massive change. Quoting further: "To the extent people want it, many currencies are available in digital forms through debit cards, payment apps and even prepaid cards. That much should be clear from the abysmal adoption rate in Nigeria, where less than 0.5% of Nigerians have used the CBDC." (This is also key to that though) "To put that number into perspective, more than 50% of Nigerians have used cryptocurrency." They are not against cryptocurrency per se, they are against CBDCs where the Government has total surveillance over the economy and they can effectively, because again it is this private blockchain; does that mean that they can restrict your usage of your own money. As we discussed in another video, when they first came out with this little scheme here in Thailand, they said this could only be utilized within a 4-kilometre radius of where one lives which beg the question of how's that going to work especially for rural folks? Then they later came out and said well we can expand it out to the Tambon level or out to the provincial level. Well thanks but turn that on its head. You can also draw it back down to 4 kilometres again if you want. Quoting further: "Unfortunately, the Nigerian Government doubled down and moved to more drastic measures by restricting cash itself." (I find this interesting. So Nigeria brings us online and then tried to get rid of cash effectively.) Quoting further: "In December, the Central Bank of Nigeria began restricting cash withdrawals to 100,000 Naira (the equivalent of US$225) per week for individuals and 500,000 ($1,123) for businesses." Okay, I'm not going to put words in anyone's mouth or presume anything but the momentum for this cashless system makes me wonder whether or not once it's in place, they will try this same thing, I just have to wonder. I am hoping they wouldn't. Can you imagine how the economy here would grind to a screeching halt if you remove that kind of liquidity from the system. Quoting further: "To make matters worse, the Nigerian Government also chose to redesign the currency during this time in a "move aimed at restoring the control of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) over currency in circulation" and to "further deepen the push to a cashless economy," according to a CBN press release. So that indeed was what they were doing.

The Central Bank in Nigeria said "to further deepen the push to a cashless economy"! Why is there a push for the cashless economy? What great benefit is society supposed to gain by this occurring? Nobody has ever shown me that. It is constantly sort of put out in the press as if it's self-evidently a good thing, self-evidently a benefit. I just don't see it especially being that we have this technology effectively now, it just doesn't have the massive Orwellian surveillance component that this type of system would bring in. Quoting further: "So not only are citizens limited in how much they may withdraw, but the Commercial Banks also don't have the cash to give out because many are still waiting for the newly designed cash to arrive." Quoting further: "With these restrictions in place, the Nigerian Government managed to drain the economy of cash and set the stage for the CBDC to finally have its moment in the spotlight." And they go on and I urge folks who are watching this video go check out that Cornell piece, go check out that CoinDesk piece, a lot of good information in there because look folks, I am not saying this because I am just trying to be contrarian for contrariness sake, I am worried about this because I think it could have a tremendous detrimental impact on the Thai economy; I think it could also have a tremendous detrimental impact to the standard liberties and freedoms that Thai folks, just the rank and file normal Thai is accustomed to having and I see no great benefit of abridging those freedoms economically, socially or in any other way by bringing the system in. I don't see what benefit is gained; I see a ton of debt being accrued and I see a ton of surveillance occurring but I see no substantial benefit to society at large as a result of this program being implemented.