Thai Digital Money - A Giant Step Closer to a CBDC Dystopia

It is pretty obvious that the global ruling class has the ultimate goal of forcing the serfs into a central bank digital currency (CBDC) ecosystem with the purpose of further controlling the unthinking and obedient  masses.  One central bank has taken significant steps in that direction and their moves may telegraph what lies ahead for the rest of us.

 

The Bank of Thailand (BOT), Thailand's central bank, is one of the world's central banks that is leading Thai citizens into the CBDC future.  According to the BOT's website, retail CBDCs (the CBDCs that are used by individual citizens as opposed to the banking sector) have the following benefits:

 

"1. Acting as part of the infrastructure to provide financial service providers with the opportunity to develop and improve their financial services. This will increase the opportunity for the business sectors and general public to gain access to financial services with ease, modern, and with more variety. Retail CBDC can easily connect with and is interoperable, which is different from the current financial system that has obstacles with connectivity and development of different financial services.

 

2. Accommodating financial innovation and financial technological development from the private sector. The development of Retail CBDC also takes into account systematic capacity to accommodate financial transactions conditions such as CBDC and Tokenized assets (Programmable payment/money) which allows to expansion in innovation from financial service providers and is highly beneficial for the future.

 

3. Protecting the balance between public and private finance. In the past several years, the rapid transition towards digital society has increased the role of digital money issued by the private sector (private money). Even though private money may address private sector transactions that are increasingly more complicated, however, there remains the issues of safety and risk. Therefore, CBDC is one channel that the general public can access public money that are considered risk-free money to fully accommodate digital financial transactions."

 

The Bank also states that the transition of the private sector toward digital money could lead to "monopolization of payment systems from over-reliance on certain private financial service provider. This may give such provider too much influence over the financial system and may impact domestic financial stability.  By issuing its own CBDC, the Bank of Thailand will play a key role in increasing the balance between private money and public money."

 

As such, the Bank started Project Bank Khun Phrom as a pilot project to test the effectiveness and safety of a retail CBDC beginning in 2022 and ending in the third quarter of 2023:

 

The project involved about 10,000 test participants and three private sector participants including the Bank of Ahydhya Public Company Limited, Siam Commercial Bank and 2C2P (Thailand) Company Limited.

 

Since the initial pilot project, the Bank in partnership with the government of Thailand have significantly expanded the experimental CBDC ecosystem.  In July 2024, Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin announced that citizens over the age of 16 with incomes of less than 840,000 baht ($23,710 US) and savings less than 500,000 baht ($14,072 US) would qualify to receive a 10,000 baht ($292 US) payment with registration opening on August 1, 2024:

The 10,000 baht will be downloaded into a digital wallet which resides in an account on a government smartphone app called Tang Rat as shown here:

 

For those of us who subscribe to the belief that CBDCs will be programable (i.e. what they can be spent on and where they can be spent will be controlled by central powers), the Thai experiment will not disappoint.  Here are the current restrictions on how the 10,000 baht can be spent:

 

Note that purchases of the following products are forbidden:

 

Government lotteries, alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, marijuana, cottages, cottages, cannabis and cottage products, vouchers, cash cards, gold, diamonds, gems, gems, oil, fuel, natural gas, electrical appliances, electronic devices and communication tools. 

 

As well, spending on services is not allowed and people can only spend the "money" in their digital wallet at small stores; department and retail stores and large national and local wholesalers are excluded from the current program.  Spending must be face-to-face (i.e. no online purchases) and merchants who wish to withdraw cash must be in the tax system (i.e. corporate or VAT or personal income tax for those with assessable income).   As well, the 10,000 baht must be spent within 6 months of receipt and is restricted to spending within the wallet holder's domicile.

 

It is interesting to see the restrictions that are being placed on the Thai digital currency which is, in fact, also has the appearance of being a trial run for a universal basic income.  While the restrictions appear to be defensible, for example supporting small, local businesses and preventing people from spending money on products with questionable health benefits, in fact, such restrictions show us how easy it will be to use digital money for social engineering.  Given these restrictions, how hard is it to envision a CBDC future where only certain "good" citizens will have access to digital currencies and only be allowed to spend them on what governments deem are "acceptable" expenditures?  I also found it concerning that the 10,000 baht payment had to be spent within 6 months (i.e. think money that expires) and that it could only be spent within the holder's domicile (i.e. think 15 minute city).  It is very clear that, in the hands of a fascist government (or even some of today's governments including one that took great pride in locking their citizens out of their bank accounts), such restrictions could quickly get out of control.

We are now one giant step closer to a CBDC-based dystopia.