A conspiracy theory — Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Bank

© Steven Boykey Sidley

Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates overlay. PHOTO: DANIEL BERMAN/REDUX. Composition by Jens Schmid

There is a narrative that unfolds like this:

Since the birth of liberalism, which means The Enlightenment or the French Revolution or the US Constitution (or even earlier, depending on the historian), the separation between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community has been the fault line for all political and even cultural contestation. What are the inalienable rights of the citizen and what are the rights of society? And do these rights collide or coincide?

Which brings us screaming into the present.

A few days ago, a long-planned Federal Reserve project was officially launched in the US. It is called FedNow. The tl:dr version of this project is that it enables Fed member banks to settle payments instantly. So a business in Los Angeles which wants to pay a business in New York at a different bank will find the transaction settling in seconds, rather than days.

This is obviously good for both business and individuals and reduces costs all round. No blockchains are involved in this — this was built using traditional centralised technology.

But, if we take a broader view, there is a much larger story unfolding. FedNow is just one of many ‘payment speed-up’ initiatives happening at the urging, and with the assistance, of the World Bank under a blanket initiative called Project FASTT. There are over 70 countries building ‘fast payment systems’ under this umbrella and FedNow just happens to be one of the largest and most visible.

And much of the funding for these efforts is coming from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

So far, none of this is of concern to either the individual or the state. It is in fact a boon. The time between payment and settlement has always been thorny — financial institutions have always extracted rent from that time slice while the payer and payee sit and twiddle their thumbs nervously and fruitlessly until the transaction is settled. All that wasted time will now disappear under various Project FASTT initiatives worldwide.

So where, you might ask, is the conspiracy theory?

It has to do with the much-contested crypto-based CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) initiatives underway in over 100 countries. A refresher — these are efforts under the aegis of central banks that use the blockchain to carry cryptotokens that move payment from place to place, instantaneously, frictionlessly and much more securely than cash or credit cards or EFTs or any other existing payment technology or process. A central-bank CBDC could result in all payment methods being consolidated under a single government-mandated cryptocurrency.

Many people are nervous about this. By their very nature, blockchain-borne CBDCs are programmable and surveillable by central authorities (as opposed to the cash in your wallet, for instance). In China the state will not only be able to micro-monitor the payment habits of every citizen via their CBDC (called the e-CNY) but will also be able to block transactions of individual citizens at whim. If the government decides a citizen has been bad, for instance by posting the wrong political comment on Facebook, their ability to buy goods can be instantly curtailed. (This kind of individual financial punishment is already being meted out, with reports of some sanctioned citizens unable to use public transport tokens as a punishment for some infraction).

Their citizens don’t seem to be worried much though — there have already been 260 million e-CNY wallets downloaded.

Other countries which have more interest in individual rights have promised not to surveille their citizens when they finally deploy their CBDCs. Well, that’s all very nice, but one does wonder. The state of Florida is so convinced that some future US CBDC will be misused by their very own federal government that they have just passed a law banning them.

There has been much written about the dangers of overreaching government citizen surveillance using CBDCs, so what’s new here and how does it relate to Project FASTT? The answer is buried in a smoking gun paragraph deep within the Project FASTT documentation.

Here it is:

“As Central Banks continue to explore the development of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) the interplay between CBDCs and fast payments is likely to receive further attention. A CBDC network and fast payment do not necessarily have to compete. One potential option in the space would be using (FASTT) payment rails to carry CBDCs”

Meaning that the World Bank is envisioning a world in which there is a single payment infrastructure entirely within its purview, if not under its control. A world in which there is no cash, and every person’s buying behaviour can be scrutinized down to the level of individual purchases and, moreover, where the payment instrument can be programmed to act differently for each citizen. That looks to me like a precision tool for citizen control more befitting of some dystopian fiction.

It also gets worse, because there is no reason to stop at payment. All assets, both digital and physical, can be tokenised, and if they are running on rails designed by the World Bank and packaged by tokens controlled by centralized nation states, well…

Do I believe in this conspiracy theory, that the World Bank and the Gates Foundation seek to control the world? No, I don’t. I am allergic to theories that assume the complex co-ordination of a huge number of people — people necessarily both venal and tight-lipped. And I think The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is a net positive for the planet. Having said that, the whole concept of CBDCs on World Bank infrastructure does make me a little queasy.

So, to return to our original narrative — to what extent is it your right to buy or sell something privately and anonymously? And to what extent does the state have the right to eavesdrop?

I know where I stand.

(For a full, if somewhat fringy exposé of the supposed conspiracy, watch this podcast from CoinBureau)

Steven Boykey Sidley is a Professor of Practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg. His new book It’s Mine: How the Crypto Economy is Redefining Ownership will be published in August 2023.

First printed in Daily Maverick