Russell Brand Sounds Alarm on CBDCs: ‘They’ll Know Exactly What You’re Doing’

Guest Post by Monica Dutcher

As central banks develop new digital currencies, critics like Russell Brand warn that expanded government controls could enable unprecedented surveillance and freeze individuals out of the financial system.

Between the recent launch of the Federal Reserve’s FedNow — a mechanism to facilitate real-time transactions — and the completion of a months-long digital dollar pilot by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, it looks as though the government is angling to track and ultimately control consumers, according to comedian and political commentator Russell Brand.

“It sounds to me like the Fed and some powerful private banks have worked out how to monopolize digital currency,” Brand said in a recent episode of his “Stay Free” podcast.

With the success of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — which the Fed and global economic policymakers initially sought to “smear” and “discredit,” according to Brand — governments are becoming increasingly interested in central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Unlike cryptocurrencies, which are decentralized and seek to allow anonymous transactions, CBDCs are centralized and can track every transaction.

Cryptocurrency values are set by the market, whereas CBDC values would be set by central banks and subject to uncontrolled “money” printing, which could lead to greater inflation.

Brand said that according to Reuters, “A total of 130 countries representing 98% of the global economy are now exploring digital versions of their currencies, with almost half in advanced development, pilot or launch stages.”

Brand cited an up-and-coming digital version of the British pound, “Britcoin,” as just one example.

The Bank of England hired digital payments platform Nuggets to outfit Britcoin with features intended to verify the holder’s age and citizenship status — presumably to help prevent the sale of age-restricted products such as alcohol and cigarettes.

Brand argued that what starts as collecting data points such as age and citizenship status can more quickly and easily devolve into collecting other types of information, including consumers’ beliefs, health and political views.

CBDC could quickly evolve into more than “a digital replica of a physical object” — which is all digital currency ever should be, said Brand.

Brand shared Christian Broadcasting Network reports explaining how credit cards are not even as invasive as CBDCs would be.

Credit cards use product codes to track purchases. That means Mastercard, for example, can’t see exactly what a consumer bought — only a “miscellaneous item” at a given retail store is logged.

By contrast, said Brand, “The [digital] currency itself is observable, monitorable. They’ll [the government] know exactly what you’re doing.”

Augustín Carstens, general manager of the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) said this about CBDC:

“We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”

Responding to the notion of centralized control, Brand said:

“The new precipice that is appearing is that the state and social media are cooperating and conspiring to a degree on how that information is used. And now what’s happening is it’s being converged and become concomitant with trade and expenditure.

“Ultimately that means you can be totally excluded from society. … We’ve already witnessed … in Canada, bank accounts being frozen, transactions being prevented. Now what we’re seeing is a further facility … to do that.”

Brand was referring to the Canadian government’s move to freeze the credit cards and bank accounts of truckers protesting in Ottawa.

Government rules to restrict freedom of speech and movement during protests can also be used to block conversations on social media platforms “whether it’s BLM [Black Lives Matter], whether it’s trans issues, whether it’s January 6,” warned Brand.

Brand discussed the potential dangers of the European Union’s Digital Services Act, which aims to hold social media platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat accountable for the speech of their online users, with potentially steep fines for noncompliance.

For Brand, these laws are a slippery slope because what the government calls “hate speech” is too often just political speech challenging government overreach.

Brand summed it up this way:

“It appears that centralist institutions, both financial and communicative, are further cooperating in order to shut down individual freedom. … This is no longer a conspiracy theory; this is a conspiracy fact. … We must overcome our individual prejudice in order to stand firm together.”

While the rollout of the FedNow system has spawned renewed concerns over digital currencies such as Brand’s, the Fed stated that FedNow is not a central bank digital currency.

The Cato Institute agreed, but admitted, “It’s important to remain vigilant”:

“Staying vigilant means working to identify issues as they come up and working to get the facts right. From ending financial privacy to destabilizing the banking system, the risks of CBDCs are all too real.”

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