Driving down the M1 motorway in England recently, I was struck by a spray-painted message across a flyover: “Stop CBDC”. It was the same message I’d seen earlier that week on a placard opposite Downing Street. These are not isolated views. Judging by a petition currently doing the rounds, tens of thousands of people across the UK have put their name to stopping CBDC. For them, CBDC is a scandal.
For the uninitiated, CBDC is central bank digital currency — a digital replacement for physical cash. At least 130 countries around the world are now considering issuing digital cash to their citizens. In the UK a consultation document was issued by the Treasury and the Bank of England in February, to which the above-named petition is the citizen response.
Eight years ago, before CBDC was even an acronym, I wrote in a speech a few (I thought uncontroversial) lines about the possibility of digital cash. Cue howls of derision. A former lecturer of mine wrote a paper entitled “Haldane Cashes Out on Cash”. A petition was mounted to stop me scrapping cash (which I signed, in a failed attempt to lighten the mood).