As chairman Giancarlo mentioned CBDCs are already very advanced as is implementation in countries around the world.

This process of developing and launching CBDCs is happening entirely outside of the democratic process and without feedback from the populations of any country in which they are being implemented.

Where we have pilot projects of CBDCs in the field for example in China, Nigeria, the Bahamas, eastern Caribbean, it's clear that the people don't want to use them. They see them as surveillance coins they see them as attempts to corral people into the use of Fiat currencies that many of them don't want to use.

There is a coercive element to the implementation of CBDCs that is not being taken into account at all in these debates at the state level.

CBDCs are just one symptom of a broader problem that I see is the growth of the surveillance state.

This kind of momentum wherein the state grows the amount of data that it collects on ordinary people with basically very little in the form of a countervailing push from civil society.