(LifeSiteNews) — An author and political activist shared that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Media Lab, which has direct links to child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, has funded three central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot (trial) programs, two of which are ongoing and none of which have been covered by the mainstream media.
In contrast with other forms of digital currency, CBDCs require that individuals open bank accounts directly with central banks such as the Federal Reserve, giving governments control over citizens’ access to money and opening the door to unprecedented tyranny.
Aaron Day, author of the 2023 book The Final Countdown that warns of the “imminent” threat of CBDCs, noted in an article for the Brownstone Institute that even before President Joe Biden signed an executive order in March 2022 hastening the establishment of CBDCs, the Federal Reserve was “well underway” in developing CBDCs.
U.S. banks have participated in three CBDC pilot programs relatively recently launched with funding from the MIT Media lab, which has received funding in turn from the notorious financier and sex offender Epstein. Disgraced Joi Ito, the former director of the Media Lab who visited Epstein’s private island according to Slate, also personally benefited from generous Epstein funding.
The three CBDC initiatives are Project Hamilton, Project Cedar, and Regulated Liability Network. They respectively explore the “technical feasibility” of a functioning CBDC, cross-country and bank-to-bank CBDC transactions, and the assignment of digital tokens for all value assets so that all transactions can be centrally tracked and settled by the government and other parties.
Project Hamilton, which was completed in December 2022, was a joint research effort between the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and MIT into the “technical feasibility of a potential CBDC,” according to the Boston Fed.
Earlier in 2022, Project Hamilton published research on a “transaction processor for a theoretical high-performance and resilient CBDC,” which was developed as open-source research software called OpenCBDC, with “project leaders urg(ing) global contributors to continue working on it.”
Day has pointed out in an interview on The David Knight Show that Project Hamilton essentially developed a form of “electronic cash” issued by the Federal Reserve that would “replace the dollar.”
While Boston Fed executive vice president Jim Cunha said the project was “agnostic” from the start about “any future policy decisions regarding new technologies and U.S. currency,” Biden declared “development efforts into the potential… deployment options of a United States CBDC” to be a matter of the “highest urgency” in Executive Order 14067, signed in March 2022.
Project Cedar is a joint venture of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of New York Mellon, and State Street, along with the BIS and the MIT Media Lab.
Now in its second pilot phase, it is a research effort into the use of a CBDCs within the context of multi-currency, wholesale cross-border payments. Day explained that “wholesale” payments here refer to what are typically high-value transactions between financial institutions including banks and businesses.
Since Project Cedar’s research efforts encompass foreign transactions, the possibility of a “multi-CBDC common platform” was raised in the Project Cedar Phase II paper as one potential solution to the “challenges” of cross-border payments.
Such a platform suggests a global CBDC technology, which is being currently developed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In June 2023, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva declared that the IMF is “working hard” on a “global CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) platform.”
“If we are to be successful, CBDCs could not be fragmented national propositions,” Georgieva said during a policy roundtable discussion with Bank Al-Maghrib in Rabat, Morocco on CBDCs. “To have transactions more efficient and fairer, we need systems that connect countries. In other words, we need interoperability.”
Such global “interoperability” was cited as an ideal in Biden’s 2022 executive order on digital assets, which notes that “A United States CBDC that is interoperable with CBDCs issued by other monetary authorities could facilitate faster and lower-cost cross-border payments.”
The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has also been designing an international CBDC program, or “multi-CBDC system,” since 2020, with “ongoing pilot projects” like Project mBridge” that are “exploring how one common system can be used to control & facilitate the flow of international payments,” Sam Callahan, a lead analyst for Swan Bitcoin, pointed out last year.
Callahan stressed that “in the various BIS CBDC pilot projects, it is the BIS itself who is appointed as the platform operator,” even while the BIS has acknowledged the risk that “public authorities,” including central banks, “would use CBDC systems as an instrument for state surveillance and control.”
According to Day, the most disturbing CBDC pilot being carried out is the Regulated Liability Network (RLN), which he warned disguises a “nefarious agenda” with a “really boring” name.
“It’s one database, basically, to track all CBDCs and non-CBDC transactions,” Day explained to Knight during their recent interview. “What’s really frightening is the idea of tokenizing everything… every asset you have can have a digital token associated with it.”
Day further elaborated on the implications of this in his Brownstone Institute article:
Imagine a future where every asset you buy (stocks, bonds, homes, cars, electronics, jewelry, etc.) is issued as digital tokens that can be tracked and settled by the government and other third parties through a centralized framework. In addition to being able to censor and freeze your money if you don’t behave the way those in control demand, they can also block the sale and perhaps even the use of your assets.
Imagine that you buy a computer with a CBDC. A digital token is created that is associated with that computer. If you engaged in behavior that the authorities didn’t like, they could track your computer and remotely disable your ability to use it or sell it. In Chapter 1 we discussed how the government could control your UBI based on your social credit score. With something like the RLN, they could also potentially block your ability to sell your car, home, or even impair your ability to use your assets remotely through this type of digital asset tracking and remote monitoring.
The RLN website describes its particular monetary concept as “the potential for a regulated Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI) that could deliver an interoperable network of all facets of the sovereign currency system: central bank money, commercial bank money, and e-money (and in the future, regulated stablecoins).”
Meanwhile, the infrastructure for a U.S. CBDC is already being quietly developed in the form of a digital instant payments service called FedNow. The service, launched in July 2023, allows “24/7 settlement… that happens instantly from bank to bank.” According to Day, this “could enable the rapid deployment of CBDCs in the U.S.”
While Day has pointed out that there is not “conclusive evidence linking Epstein’s funding directly to the CBDC pilots,” he noted that the MIT Media lab that provided funding for all three had itself been assisted at the direction of Epstein.
Ronan Farrow’s New Yorker exposé, titled “How an Elite University Research Center Concealed Its Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein,” reported:
Epstein was acknowledged for facilitating at least $7.5 million in donations for the lab, which included $2 million from (Bill) Gates and $5.5 million from (Leon) Black. These contributions were described in emails as being ‘directed’ by Epstein or made at his insistence.
The lab staff’s awareness of Epstein’s involvement was so pervasive that some members of Joi Ito’s office informally referred to Epstein as Voldemort or ‘he who must not be named.’
According to Day, these “connections suggest a potential globalist agenda aimed at consolidating power and compromising individual sovereignty.”
Indeed, as Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has suggested, what distinguishes CBDCs from other forms of digital money, and appears to be its sole purpose, is the power over personal finances that it gives the government.
“I keep asking anybody at the Fed or outside the Fed to explain to me what problem this is solving,” Kashkari said in reference to CBDCs at the annual conference of the Journal of Financial Regulation at Columbia Law School in 2022. “I can send anybody in this room five dollars with Venmo right now. So what is it that a CBDC could do that Venmo can’t do?”
“And all I get is a bunch of hand-waving. Like, ‘Maybe it’s better for financial inclusion… Maybe. Is there any evidence that it is?”
“I can see why China would do it. If they want to monitor every one of your transactions, you could do that with a central bank digital currency. You can’t do that with Venmo. If you want to impose negative interest rates, you can do that with a central bank digital currency. You can’t do that with Venmo.”
“And if you want to directly tax customer accounts, you could do that with a central bank digital currency. You can’t do that with Venmo. So I get why China would be interested. Why would the American people be for that?”
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz recently introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC, warning that “The Biden administration salivates at the thought of infringing on our freedom and intruding on the privacy of citizens to surveil their personal spending habits, which is why Congress must clarify that the Federal Reserve has no authority to implement a CBDC.”
