Bitcoin Forum

One of the main digital newspapers in Portugal, presented a very good opinion article about Bitcoin:

Bitcoin: a vacina ecológica contra a pandemia digital (Bitcoin: the ecological vaccine against the digital pandemic)
https://observador.pt/opiniao/bitcoin-a-vacina-ecologica-contra-a-pandemia-digital/

The article is in Portuguese, but it is an excellent article that I recommend reading and sharing.

Here's a little bit of what's been talked about:


If you can't understand some part when translating, say so.

EDIT:
You can find the article in English here:

sorry to inform you,,,

CBDC are using idea's from the hyperledger project.

the hyperledger project is using bitcoin as a sandbox to evolve CBDC("layer 2 solutions")

yep bitcoin innovation for onchain scaling to be a utility for the masses has been choked and helld back, because the bitcoin innovation is calling subnetwork (hyperledger buzzword 'layer 2") as solutions..
where we are stuck with a broken flawed LN network being the service offering for so called scaling. yet after 5 years we have not expanded tx count of bitcoin utility and the adoption rate of LN is super small because its a crap network and not the solution we need

yes as a currency bitcoin is deflationary and beats any fiat/CBDC as a currency unit
but then bitcoin network has been held back for the last 5 years to not innovate bitcoin. with sill sub-par networks that have broken promises and reputation of bitcoin as a viable currency

i love bitcoin, but we have been choked and strangled for the last 5 years

CBDC’s are evil, total control & communism by governments. The thought of them makes me sick. Imagine being unable to buy more meat this month because your social credit score indicates you’ve had too much so your government controlled CBDC payment is declined. That’s what this whole thing is about, a CBDC twinned with a social credit score for everybody.

I will not be a part of the Great Reset, this is why we have bitcoin.

CBDCs are indeed evil! With cash, we still had some certain degrees of anonymity. But with CBDC, that last amount of anonymity is gone as the government will have a bird's eye view on its citizens' finances. It will become extremely easy for the enforcement agencies to catch money launderers and tax evaders. But also, it will create multiple issues on a normal person's life. Fully digital economy is a highly risky proposition.

Bitcoin and other decentralised cryptocurrencies are definitely going to act as a vaccine to a centralised system where privacy doesn't matter anymore!

Thank you for the translated version, although even in English a lot of the message the writer was trying to pass was lost on me.
For one, fiat has been digital for a long time now, with the exception of cash transactions which can be accounted for at the final point of exchange. CBDCs would not function much differently from internet or mobile banking which are under the full control of the government.

Bitcoin also is not a solution to government plans and policies. CBDC would exist and would possibly be adopted by other countries who are not subscribed to it now, and there would be citizens who do not mind a third party being up in their business.

- Jay -

---

Thank you for the translated version, although even in English a lot of the message the writer was trying to pass was lost on me.
For one, fiat has been digital for a long time now, with the exception of cash transactions which can be accounted for at the final point of exchange. CBDCs would not function much differently from internet or mobile banking which are under the full control of the government.

Bitcoin also is not a solution to government plans and policies. CBDC would exist and would possibly be adopted by other countries who are not subscribed to it now, and there would be citizens who do not mind a third party being up in their business.

- Jay -

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

I don't hate fiat because I still use it every day, and it's still necessary for us, but the truth is that CBDCs are the worst and most trashy thing the government is trying to create. Although it offers more utility than fiat, we already have bitcoin, and we don't need more CBDC. CBDC is just a tool for them to control us entirely, I have never hated the government, but with the CBDC initiative, I cannot take their side.

At every introduction of bitcoin against a centralized currency there will always be difference, bitcoin has been the only digitally most recognized currency that provides freedom others cannot which is the more reasons everybody want to invest with bitcoin and remain decentralized from the influence of the third party system, cbdc and bitcoin may be thesame under digital currency but one is fiat and the other a crypto, this makes it an additional accumulation of potentials bitcoin has come to offer with world economy whereby fiat couldn't make a difference over the years and if definitely a change is needed then it has to come in with the introduction of bitcoin over fiat.

bitcoin was designed as a sole custody option of a deflationary currency
however features of the last 5 years are about co-signed part-signed options of group authority of value

bitcoin was designed as a peer-to-peer  deflationary digital cash currency
however features of the last 5 years are about off-ramping users to other networks for the "cash" style payments. and have bitcoin as the elitism reserves of corporate hubs


bitcoin needs to get back to how it was architectured in 2009-16 and then open up transact-ability for all  to reduce costs and expand utility

CBDC invented the 2 layer system and bitcoin devs decided to emulate CBDC 2 layer system and become the corporate sandbox test for CBDC

we need to do better then CBDC not become like them

I would say it's not as terrible as you make it out to be. I do not mean to say that they are not going to use it to destroy your privacy, but imagine the regular situation we are in right now without CBDC, is it any different in government world? Think about it this way, you have majority of the world using banks, debit or credit cards, loans etc, which means it is already tracked, only thing that you won't be tracked is cash, which could still technically be tracked, but harder.

This means the same with CBDC, even bitcoin can be tracked, so only way would be moving it to privacy coins, if you want to, and it won't be tracked, or just use bitcoin, so get CBDC and turn that into bitcoin and if you are not worthy of tracking, they won't.

I generally agree that CBDCs are another step away from privacy, although not a very big one after bank accounts and huge tech giants. For example, I recently visited one of those Amazon stores where you scan your Amazon account at the entrance, and then just take any products you want from the shelves (without scanning them anywhere) and leave without paying. The money is withdrawn later from the card linked to your Amazon account. While convenient, it does make you feel like you're in a Black Mirror episode. CBDC, IMO, isn't a big step further away from privacy after such things. And just like those Amazon stores, someone will find CBDCs convenient and won't care enough about privacy to be against them.

Thank you for indicating the official English version. I discovered the same later, but you were faster.
I've updated the original post with your suggestion. Thanks.


Of course the article, is an opinion piece by the writer. But that reflects a reality that should cause greater concern than it is causing.

CBDC allow the government to force the money to be spent or not, where to spend it among other things. But of course the governments will never say this clearly to the population, they will just convey the idea that it will be a new form of money where the person will have greater security and that does not need intermediaries. But this is just one of the few advantages this system has. As for the governments, it's just advantages.
 

Just accept the fact that government will not use Bitcoin as the national currency in normal conditions.  The government doesn't consider what you have now but takes priority on what they have now and what they need to have. They either go with the trend of Bitcoin or do things that can compete with Bitcoins.  Typical of the government to release things that can have control over people or be able to spy on people's property. 


The government only tells people the things they "have" to know.  They never tell people the hidden intention behind the implementation of that thing.

This is a horrible analogy.  Given the dangers of the vaccine and it's recipients dropping dead all around the world, I take a bit of offense to this allegation of similarities.  If Bitcoin is the vaccine, what's the natural immunity, because that's where I'd want my money...  I get the sensationalism of touting the word vaccine to get attention, but c'mon...  If anything I would say that the dollar is the virus, CBDC is the vaccine, and Bitcoin is natural immunity.  Be strong, be independent, don't wait for the government to save you with their experimental vaccines or CBDCs...  Bitcoin is not the government provided vaccine, Bitcoin is natural immunity.

This is an interesting point.

But I would say that natural immunity is not using money! But today this is difficult to happen, despite some trying (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5938484/).

The money virus was created by governments, which is now gaining momentum that will make society even more dependent on it and under greater control. In this sense, you can say that Bitcoin will be the vaccine for this new variant.

Either way, I think the author of the text just wanted to make an analogy with terms that are right in people's minds because of the pandemic.

People talk about CBDC as if it's a big thing, but it's not. They do not exist, they are just fantasies of some government officials. They didn't even start after the creation of Bitcoin, talks about a government-owned digital currency existed before Bitcoin too. That's because from time to time people in government think that it would be cool if they owned a payment network themselves and didn't have to deal with banks and companies like Visa to monitor people's transactions.

CBDC is not bringing government-owned digital currency closer, in fact I'd say it's postponing it, because basing this project on cryptocurrency design would only be detrimental, because crypto can't scale well and it's hard to develop, unlike easy to understand and develop centralized systems. If CBDC would emerge, it would have nothing to do with Bitcoin and crypto.

sounds like you watch too much fox news and dont do much research on that topic.. the death rate due to vaccines is less than death rate of those unvaccinated. sorry to burst your horse tranquilliser induced propaganda

you cant have a defense against something unfelt before.
its like first time you get into a punch up(fight) your not expecting it so you get the worst of it. so you need to train your body incase you enter another fight. you can try to learn by yourself, but take many punches along the way.. or you can get a trainer


previous statement i said put aside, and lowering standards to your level as analogies
 fiat is a common virus. it causes problems no one likes it but people got used to getting it and just continued on with their lives not caring about how negatively the effects are of getting it

CBDC is a mutation virus which occurred due to virus evolution, by getting around some flaws of the first generation my mimicking and understanding the defence.

and bitcoin is the defence against the virus(s)

the issue though if you look into the actions since 2014 of how those in authority have manipulated certain aspects of bitcoins defences. it is slowly turning bitcoin into an auto-immune disease where the evolved defence, attacks its own native defence

side/subnetworks to-from bitcoin advertised as the solution to bitcoin defence flaws. is actually causing more problems for bitcoin.

pre 2014 bitcoin was deemed private property(no regulation needed), then it got declared as a epidemic(mainstream currency) where regulators got involved. and now that it has side subnetworks  its now deemed a commodity(primary asset/mineral/produce that creates other products). where even more regulators are involved
where by even these subnetworks are harming bitcoin rather than letting bitcoin grow naturally onchain

There is a popular saying in my country that says: "Where there is smoke, there is fire".

It is a fact that is not yet a reality. But is it really that far from being? The major world economies are carrying out extensive studies on the implementation of CBDC.

We can question whether they will implement after these studies. Well, why would they say no to a financial system that gives complete control to the Central Bank and governments?

The European Central Bank is in the final phase of the study it is carrying out on the subject, during 2023 we will have news about the result of this study and the next steps. That's why it's pay attention. You can find out more here:
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/digital_euro/html/index.en.html

I think the spread of CBDCs can't be likened to a pandemic yet. It is not widespread yet. Although many countries have either studied or piloted their own versions of CBDCs already, there isn't a single country yet that is using a CBDC as its official currency. So if we are to liken Bitcoin to a vaccine against something considered a pandemic, it must be against the fiat currency itself, which a CBDC essentially is though. But Bitcoin is basically a solution to the kind of monetary system we have in place right now.

endemic. vs epidemic
a disease controlled in small area.. vs wide-spread and growing within a community

pandemic: globally spread

..

you might want to also look into the BIS m-bridge which will be like the IMF international reserves bank of all CBDC's

..
but as for the conspiracies..
from the current viewpoint of CBDC evolution.. if we were to compare CBDC to the "bitcoin layer 2"

in a CDBC system there are 2 networks at play.. a blockchain network and a smartcontract network..  the central bank is the miner of the blockchain coin creation(mostly premined with no difficulty) between central bank and commercial banks, swapping reserves on their mainnet

below that, the commercial banks(payment services) act as the smart contract hubs of a subnetwork, which manages funds with customers where the commercial services store the routing payment information
the commercial services do the monitoring of their customers (not politicians) and only report suspected users particular suspect event/payment to authorities.. that then if suspicion results in evidence of a crime, authorities ask for a court order to get all routed information of that user and the KYC details of that user and any and all information of that user


im saying all this because i see alot of tinfoil narratives that make it sound like politicians watch everyones purchases every day(governments)

its the commercial banks(businesses) that are watching via algorithms.. not politicians spying on everyone all day.

to understand your enemy, to fight your enemy, learn who your enemy is and which faction of enemy is doing what

I really liked this beautiful analogy, this is a logical analogy to a large extent, because Bitcoin and (CBDC) are completely contradictory, the first is based on freedom and decentralization, and the second is based on centralization and complete control by governments.

I consider CBDC to be much more dangerous than fiat, because imagine if governments made CBDC and forced all citizens to exchange their fiat for CBDC what would happen? The government will have complete control over all the financial movements of the citizens, strictly monitoring them, banning them, freezing their funds, or even preventing them from using their digital money in any way if it wants.

It's really like a virus that puts the cell under complete control and makes it work for the virus completely.

This is what governments want. They couldn't stop Bitcoin, so they want to replace it with CBDC.

I need to disagree with your analogy, vaccine is created during or after someone is sick, but Bitcoin was created before any government want to create their own CBDC. So the analogy doesn't make sense since Satoshi already create it before CBDC happen.

But I tend to agree CBDC created is to kill Bitcoin, but they're forget Bitcoin is decentralized and anyone can buy or sell Bitcoin even the whole countries absolute ban Bitcoin usage through decentralized exchange.

On that I agree with you. The current financial system no longer works, it was designed more than 100 years ago, and is not ready for globalization. No matter how much interest rates increase or how much money is injected into the economy, we will have shorter and more frequent up and down cycles. And that's not good for anyone.

So I agree that the idea is to create a single, global financial system, with a single currency for the entire world, but each government can continue to create its own rules. And CBDC is one of the best solutions for that. One currency, but each country has its own rules.




The idea of the author of the article is to indicate that Bitcoin is the vaccine for the current financial system, which is undergoing a serious change for CBDC. Hence this type of analogy.

I don't think that there is a great difference between physical fiat and CBDCs. If there is someone should let me know what I am missing.  I think that the only difference is that one is offline while the other one is digital. Even if it runs on blockchain, it is still centralized. If it is tracking ones expenses, I think mobile bank apps are used by banks and other of their data base to know the spending habits and the worth of their customers.

I also don't hate it because it's going to make me hypocrite while I'm using it. That's the fact, most of us still use it and very unlikely to avoid using fiat.

But this CBDC is just another idea that the government should just stop doing so, this is making their gateway to digitalization but they're also aware that cashless transactions are already there.

What's the purpose of this if there's already an existing one for most countries?

Already in my country, there is a move by the government to force the use of CBDC's down our throat by reducing the withdrawal limits and amount of cash in circulation. But just as you have said OP about bitcoins being the vaccines against CBDC virus, nobody will be talking about the vaccines, if there are no viruses, a vaccine will not be relevant without a virus. Forcefully introducing CBDC's will only have the long term effect of making Bitcoins more popular.

Basically what we discussing is, anything that goes into digital form is now under the radar of authorities. We can not freely transmit the data neither use any asset freely which has taken digital format. It is laughable thing but bitcoin was supposed to be fearless, pseudo anonymous and have the data integrity issue solved for us. But as we know already, various governments, financial institutes, authorities like SEC and CBDC are always putting their nose into matter of bitcoin. They are the reason for whole exposure of the crypto currencies otherwise we would have followed amazing trail of anonymous and unlimited transaction system.
Bitcoin was vaccine which has failed over the time due to such organization. There is still time needed to understand how one could improvise and implement it in the system.

Privacy coins are the vaccines against the CBDC virus.

Many countries developed their own CBDC, but the same isn't working in an effective way. The existence of bitcoin have made people understand the flaws in the traditional monetary system. The existence of CBDC have given access for the governments to have control over people's money in an easier way than the monetary system. If a common CBDC is developed and countries begun to use it, then it can make some changes.

Because if people will not want to use it, it would me just a waste of resources and a humiliation. CBDC can only succeed if its better than existing payment methods. If it has lower fees, better customer service, better cashback and other incentives, better interest rates. It also must be globally accepted.

What are the chances that a CBDC will manage to achieve that? How many countries in the world are able to create a government-owned version of Visa and get it as adopted? I'd say zero.

I don't think that the CBDC is going to act as a commercial bank. The interest rates won't be lower because of the CBDC, they will be lower because the central bank had changed them. A CBDC won't offer things like cashback and customer support service. The financial institutions will keep offering such services. I'm not an expert in CBDCs, but I think that the main reason behind CBDC creation is the central bank gaining more control over the commercial banks. I don't think that the main focus on CBDCs will be direct control over people's savings or how the people spend their money. Who knows, maybe this is their hidden agenda. I don't wanna get into conspiracy theories right now.  ;D

But Central Banks will never deal directly with the final consumer. They are not going to put an end to the commercial banking business. These types of financial products continued to be developed by commercial banks. This idea of no fees, it's just now in the launch phase, to attract consumers to join. After being massively adopted and in the daily lives of the population, fees arise.

As for adoption... well, fiat belongs to governments, as does CBDC. So, if governments stop accepting fiat and start accepting only CBDC, the population will simply have to change.

According to what I aw during all these months after they started talking about the CBDCs, I can say CBDCs are the same as the traditional fiat currency and they are just a little bit shinier to attract people's attention to the centralized systems because in the end the CBDC is under control of the governments and the transaction are under control by a third-party element while I think the whole purpose of creating CBDC is to make a competitor for bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and this idea already failed.

I really don't think that we need CBDCs at all in our life.
It's like they're hammering their own head by doing this, because we already have PayPal and other various e-currency platforms allowing us to perform transactions in different currencies of the world, so what's the real point of coming up with a CBDC? That's just because they (your government) want to keep a track record of all your transactions directly and so they'll lure you to use their CBDCs and save on fees that you pay to these e-currency vendors. However, we in India already have UPI services that allow us to send INR from one account to another without any fee (mostly). So I don't understand the point of coming up with a CBDC when we already have the solutions available to transact our traditional fiat currency faster and cheaper.

Anything that do starts up on being centralized and minding about beating up Bitcoin into its current place then they had already failed from the start.The community do knows on what they do need and on what

are the things which is really just good to be an alternative.We cant deny that these CBDC's does have actually some utility or usage which if we do talk about trading or investment decisions which it could
really make yourself save up when there's too extreme volatility which it is really a common actions to be made.

There's no way that it could really replace out those decentralized things considering that they are totally opposite.Its better not to stress yourself out that much when it regards to this
manner because this is no different with digital fiat or something like this.

But a CBDC goes much further than that. Governments now have the ability to manage how and where money is spent. That is, while current systems only allow governments to have a certain level of information on transactions, with CBDC they now have full control of the money.

Besides that, CBDC opens the door for the so desired "one world currency" we are hearing since a long time ago. Rumours said it was bitcoin, but as we know bitcoin is the antidote to control from central authorities, the one world currency can come only from the subversion of bitcoin, in form of the CBDCs, developed by the enthusiasts of globalism who seek for unlimited regulations and surveillance over the common citizens.

Once CBDCs are introduced and enforced, we will need bitcoin more than ever. And this time must not be too far.

cbdc is a virus. and bitcoin needs to be ready to kick some asses

It remains to be seen, with the CBDC implemented, what difficulties we will have to face in order to acquire Bitcoin. The best thing is to go together today, as a prevention.

My suspicion has always been that, if governments do become hostile towards Bitcoin, the first thing they would likely do is prevent people from sending CBDC tokens to centralised exchanges, so people would no longer be able to purchase Bitcoin in that way.  

Bitcoin merely existing isn't enough.  We also need people to use Bitcoin in the intended way.  In order for a vaccine to be effective, it has to be administered correctly.  As such, people need to get accustomed to using Bitcoin in the peer-to-peer manner it was designed to be used.  People won't gain any protection if the only thing they do with their Bitcoin is leave it on exchanges.  

Is this for real? I never thought it goes something worse like this and I don't know how they even can it equality for everybody with this kind of system. Bitcoins are really unique and it would be a great opportunity for us to consider migrating to use it and transact using it for our essential needs. After all, it's really a pain in the ass when you are getting controlled by the government about buying what you want with your own money and it's not first come first serve anymore, people that come first will not be able to buy everything he needs due to the new rules that they about t implement which is really weird.