This is a quote from US federal reserve’s report or white paper on CBDCs that was published in January of last year, so exactly one year ago.

“Any CBDC intermediary would need to verify the identity of a person accessing CBDCs just as banks and other financial institutions currently verify the identities of their customers.”

This brought to my mind a quote from Timothy May, one of the cypher punks, who wrote in the 1990s that “The four horsemen of the infocalypse will be used to justify doing away with privacy online, these are terrorists paedophiles drug dealers and money launderers.”

We're seeing that in action today. There's basically a new AML law every few years starting with the 1970 bank secrecy act. The 2001 Patriot Act was perhaps the most significant of these in recent memory. We've also seen since 1989 the establishment of the financial action task force, which is a global network of financial police. FinCen and US treasury office of intelligence and analysis.

The overall trends here are that reporting thresholds for financial transactions are being continually lowered.