Kennedy Warns Against CBDC’s Threat to Financial Privacy
Robert F. Kennedy, a Democrat running for the US presidency in 2024, has opposed the Federal Reserve's plan to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
In a lengthy message, Kennedy warns that a CBDC could lead to a loss of financial freedom and political power, stating that the government’s plans for a CBDC “grease the slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny.”
According to Kennedy, CBDCs severely threaten citizens’ financial privacy and could grant the government unprecedented power to monitor transactions, limit spending, and freeze assets.
Moreover, Kennedy believes that coupling CBDCs with digital IDs and social credit scores would further enable the government to restrict spending and freeze assets for noncompliance with “arbitrary diktats,” including vaccine mandates.
Kennedy also cautions that a CBDC could pave the way for the government to ban and confiscate Bitcoin, much like they did with gold in the 1930s.
READ MORE: Bitcoin’s Potential to Outshine Risky Assets – Bloomberg Analyst Weighs in
He predicts that global governments will exploit crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic and banking instability to promote CBDCs as a “safe haven” from paper currencies and bank runs.
Notably, the Federal Reserve is set to launch its CBDC service, FedNow, in July. While supporters of CBDCs highlight their potential benefits, such as faster and more affordable transactions and increased financial inclusion, Kennedy’s concerns about government overreach highlight the complex issues surrounding the adoption of CBDCs.
Alexander Stefanov
Reporter at CoinsPress
Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
