Around 90 central banks are either in the process of experimenting with or are already piloting central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

[over 100 including the] 19 Euro Area economies [of the European Central Bank (ECB)].

They include all G20 economies and together represent more than 90% of global GDP.

Three CBDCs have already gone fully live in the past two years: the so-called DCash in the Eastern Caribbean, the Sand Dollar in the Bahamas and the eNaira in Nigeria. The International Monetary Fund, the world’s most powerful supranational financial institution, has been lending its expertise in the roll out of CBDCs.

In his latest letter to investors, the CEO of BlackRock, Larry Fink, said the Ukrainian conflict has the potential to accelerate the development of digital currencies across the world.

China has already launched its own digital yuan and is piloting its use in more than a dozen cities and regions. It has also been experimenting with its cross-border functionality. This has ignited fears in the West that that U.S. “financial leadership” is under threat — fears that have been magnified by the way US and EU sanctions against Russia, particularly the confiscation of a large chunk of Russia’s foreign currency reserves have backfired, encouraging not just Russia but many countries on the planet to seek out an alternative cross-border payments system.

So how could CBDCs impact our lives? Here are four of the most important ways:

1. It will grant central banks far more power over our payment behavior.
2. That power could be used to “program” our spending.
3. No limit on negative interest rates.
4. Financial exclusion on steroids.

Lyons warns that CBDCs, “if not deliberately and carefully constrained in advance by law,… have the potential to become even more than a technocratic central planner’s dream. They could represent the single greatest expansion of totalitarian power in history.”