Arthur Hayes calls central bank digital currencies ‘pure evil’

Arthur Hayes, the former CEO of the Bitcoin exchange BitMEX, described CBDC as an ideal tool for governments and an assault on sovereignty over peer-to-peer transactions.

CDBC’s are «Pure Evil», read on to find out why and what we can do to stop them.https://t.co/a1mHZkDsvI pic.twitter.com/NSFspQHZjj

— Arthur Hayes (@CryptoHayes) November 4, 2022

«For banks, CBDCs pose an existential threat to their existence as viable enterprises,» he added.

Hayes says that commercial banks are the allies in the fight against national digital currencies. In his view, with the rollout of CBDC these financial institutions will become redundant intermediaries between people and the central banks.

«I believe that the apathy of the majority will enable governments to easily take our physical money and replace it with CBDCs, which will lead to a utopia (or a dystopia) of financial surveillance,» he wrote.

The key difference Hayes identifies between modern fiat and central bank digital currencies is the ability for authorities to exert full control over the latter.

Earlier, former MicroStrategy head and Bitcoin maximalist Michael Saylor criticized CBDCs for instability and doubted their success.

Earlier in September, Thomas Moser, a member of the Swiss National Bank’s board, said that central bank digital currencies will bring stability to the DeFi sector.

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