CBDCs

Programmable money that can expire, geofence, and say no. The pilot programs multiply.

Central bank digital currency: not a theory but a pilot program — over 130 countries researching, China's e-CNY deployed at scale, the ECB and Fed publishing design papers whose own text lists the contested features (programmability, expiry, transaction visibility). The BIS general manager's 2020 remark — 'absolute control' over money's use, on video — did the folklore's work for it. The counter-list is also real: privacy-preserving designs, offline cash-likeness, legislated limits. The archive files CBDCs where it files all infrastructure: judged not by intentions, but by what the switch, once built, can do.