CBDC

The value of a currency is based on trust. The Russian sanctions have not helped the status of Western currencies. Yet crypto currencies also have difficulty escaping Western sanctions. The digital currency issued by China’s central bank, also known as the e-yuan, is succeeding. It may gradually gain market share from the dollar.

You may have noticed that when Whatsapp starts a new chat, it displays a message that “end-to-end encryption” is being used. This means that the content of the messages cannot be read by anyone other than the people in the chat (though some question the extent of this). Facebook, the owner of Whatsapp, knows something about who you were in contact with and when, but not (necessarily) what it was about.