Can someone explain to me why I should be terrified of a CBDC but Bitcoin I should be excited about. All this talk from Trump about bitcoin is quite frankly not comforting to me. I don’t trust any of it.
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Bitcoin is both a decentralised /distributed currency and ledger of accounts that no individual or group has control over. A copy of the ledger (blockchain) can be stored on anyone's computer. It is limited in quantity and therefore cannot be inflated. The rules cannot be changed by a central authority without consent. It's advent was the first time in history that a third party wasn't required for financial transactions.
A CBDC has the the same core feature set, but it is centralised and the rules can be changed by a central authority (i.e. the government). The government could inflate the currency supply, restrict your spending to certain locations or businesses, put expiry dates on the currency to force you to spend it, or turn off your ability to spend completely. You have to trust a third party in this scenario.
Whilst in theory Bitcoin could be used like a CBDC, changing it's rules or editing the ledger requires majority consensus from everyone on the network. However, because it's user base is spread across the globe and across individuals and groups with different ideologies, people aren't going to agree to change it in a way that makes it worse. Furthermore, if this did happen, people would just use a competing cryptocurrency and Bitcoin's value would plummet.