Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host, warned last week that a shift to digital currency in the U.S. would mean the disappearance of freedom and privacy in the country and enable the government to control nearly every facet of life.

Rogan was asked by his guest, rapper Post Malone, about his thoughts on central bank-backed digital currency. 

“No fucking way,” the host said. “No way. That’s what I think. I think that’s checkmate. That’s game over. Because if they apply that to a social credit score, if they decide somehow or another that you need some social credit score system and it’s for the benefit of society, and they outline that, they can track your behavior and your tweets and all your things … They just decided you fucked up, and the rules are the rules.”

TREND FORECAST: In the 28 July 2020 Trends Journal, we had forecast that “the world monetary system will devolve from dirty cash to digital trash.” Since then, the devolution has progressed at a fast clip, leading us to renew our prediction as a Top Trend 2023.

Governments and central bankers claim that the shift to a cashless society will help prevent crime and increase convenience for ordinary people. But as we had forecast, the real motivation behind the war on cash is more government control over the individual… so they know every penny spent, where it was spent, and what it was spent on. And the bottom line is, the political system will be guaranteed of getting every tax dollar that they “deserve.”

Our coverage of this growing trend can be found in past articles, including:

● “JPMorgan to Create Digital Bank” (2 Feb 2021)

● “Global Banksters Going Digital” (29 Jun 2021)

● “China Goes Full Digital Yuan in Beijing” (29 Jun 2021)

● “Mexico’s Central Bank Going Digital” (11 Jan 2022)

● “Fed Releases Digital Dollar Report: Going Crypto?” (25 Jan 2022)

● “U.S. Treasury Pushing for a Digital Dollar” (20 Sep 2022)

We reported in late 2022, the U.S. treasury has recommended the federal government continue researching the prospect and possible impacts of a digital dollar.

The department urged continued “policy and technical work on a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC) so the United States is prepared if a CBDC is determined to be in the national interest.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen thinks it is.

“Some aspects of our current payment system are too slow or too expensive,” she said during a 15 September call with reporters.

Already, 105 countries responsible for 95 percent of the world’s economic productivity are developing or have created a CBDC, according to a report by the Atlantic Council.

Vivek Ramaswamy, one of the Republicans running for president in 2024, said “CBDCs are just the latest Trojan horse of the Great Reset and are a clear path to a social credit system that will permanently embed ESG into our currency itself.” 

China has been circulating its digital yuan for more than a year, as we reported in “China Goes Full Digital Yuan in Beijing” (29 Jun 2021) and “China’s Digital Yuan Could Challenge Dollar’s Leadership” (27 Jul 2021).

Ramaswamy said, “In the U.S., that’s become an argument to say we need to do that to keep up. I view it the other way—precisely for the reasons that Xi Jinping wants to adopt it, are exactly the reasons why we in the United States shouldn’t.”