I want you to imagine yourself in the following circumstances. All three situations are real. Turkey is a direct experience from a friend.
Lebanon, 2023.
You've worked your arse off for over 50 years to ensure a good retirement for yourself and your wife. You ran the numbers, and if you're lucky, you will have atleast 20 years to enjoy the rest of your days doing what you have waited so long for. Christmas has gone, and the new year brings an exciting nervousness for what the future holds. It's your first month being retired, and you receive your first paycheck of 1600 dollars. A month passes. It's now the 1st of February, 2023, and you only receive 80 dollars. Overnight, the Lebanese Central Bank has devalued the currency by 90 percent. Your entire pension you slaved 50 years for, is worth 90 percent less than last month. You question whether it was really worth it.
Turkey, 2023.
After only a year into your marriage, you and your husband are forced to move out of Istanbul and into the countryside because the cost of living is becoming unbearable. Inflation and interest rates have decimated any hope of owning a car, even on a two-income household. Monthly wages have quadrupled, yet you're still forced to take on debt just to afford basic household necessities to survive. In just a couple of years, prices have risen so much it is now costing you a quarter of your income just to provide groceries. You and your husband seriously start to question what it takes just to stop living on the hunger line.
Venezuela, 2016 - 2022.
It's 2018, and for the past three years your country has dealt with the brutal realities of having a 57 million percent inflation rate. During the hardest economic time of your life, the usage of anything other than your now worthless currency, is illegal. You cannot turn to USD, EURO, crypto or even gold. The streets are littered with paper Bolivar's as everyone around you rushes to get rid of fiat. Bartering seems like the only way out from complete financial devastation, provided you have something useful to offer. Fast forward to 2022, and it costs you almost your entire month's salary to afford a single grocery shop for your family. You wait in line for over 10 hours to buy the items you need, but are not even sure they have them in stock. By the time you reach the checkout, the government overseeing the supermarket have increased prices yet again, forcing you to spend money you cannot afford. You are losing hope by the day.
It's incredibly important that we challenge traditional banking, because on a long enough time frame, every single one of us comes face to face with the detrimental effects of running on a financial system backed by absolutely nothing. Your time may come sooner, as it has for Lebanon, Turkey, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and many other countries. But for most of the population, you are only noticing the minor effects. There is no longer any justice or accountability held to the banks and governments that clearly have no regard for the poor treatment they are dealing society. It is about time we, the people, unite together under the banner of financial liberation to learn to work together as a collective, outside the control of these tyrants.
Complete systematic repression and financial and speech censorship in the form of CBDCs and Social Credit Systems are already becoming a reality in many countries. Governments will have complete control over you and decide the level of freedom over the actions you can and can't take. What will be the clamp used to restrain the freedom of choice we have in life? Money. So we must fight for our right to exercise freedom of speech, choice and finances. In the realm of finances, Bitcoin provides us all with a way to do so.
If you're fortunate enough to be living in a country with access to the education and resources that actively promote why we need to stray away from traditional banking, do not take the information lightly, because the future of everyone you love and interact with depends on it.
https://cbdctracker.hrf.org/cbdc-101
