Horowitz: South Dakota and other red states are about to ban Bitcoin as legal money and grease the skids for CBDC

 It’s the year 2050. You own nothing, eat bugs, and rely on central bank digital currency controlled by global governments to sustain yourself, but are severely limited in what you can use those funds for. Well, if red-state governors don’t get hit over the head very soon, central bank digital currency might be upon us very soon. There is cryptic and subtle legislation racing through the red states, beginning with South Dakota, that will better facilitate CBDC rather than blocking it and will pre-emptively ban Bitcoin and other crypto currencies as a decentralized option to escape from this looming menace.

The Uniform Commercial Code is a set of standards to facilitate interstate sales and commercial transactions such that all definitions pertaining to such commerce are uniform and clearly understood. The UCC, which has been overseen by the Chicago-based non-profit Uniform Law Commission since 1952, has been adopted in every state’s legal code and is amended from time to time. Typically, the amendments are non-controversial, although the subject matter is very dense and complex to people not involved in monetary policy and finance.

The ULC suddenly pushed a slew of amendments in bills 100-200 pages long, which is very unusual for state legislatures, without any legislative oversight from conservatives. These bills are sailing through committees and even some full chambers without any opposition. But in South Dakota, the state targeted first because it is home to the big banks, members of the South Dakota House Freedom Caucus flagged a very disturbing provision about the changes to the most important definition of all – the definition of “money” itself.

Specifically, HB 1193, under Section 1 (24), states the following:

"Money" means a medium of exchange that is currently authorized or adopted by a domestic or foreign government. The term includes a monetary unit of account established by an intergovernmental organization or by agreement between two or more countries. The term does not include an electronic record that is a medium of exchange recorded and transferable in a system that existed and operated for the medium of exchange before the medium of exchange was authorized or adopted by the government. (Emphasis in original.)

Nobody read this provision, and it wound up sailing through the state House before it was even flagged by members outside the Judiciary Committee. It passed the House 49-17 and the Senate 24-9. In plain English, it appears to open the door for states to pre-emptively accept any new currency adopted by governments, which in the era we live in is designed for CBDC. However, in the ultimate double whammy, it would exclude Bitcoin from the definition of money because it was in existence “before” this future hypothetical medium of exchange is adopted. So the amendment presupposes an electronic medium of exchange for legal tender but excludes those forms already in existence, presumably to pave the road for the ultimate form of digital currency officials are planning.

This concern was first flagged by the sharp eyes of South Dakota state Reps. Scott Odenbach and Jon Hansen, who raised concerns during the House Judiciary Committee hearing last month. Odenbach expressed concern that the new definition of money “might be paving the way for Central Bank Currency.”

However, we need not speculate about the definition. In the video PowerPoint presentation on the amendments, Steven Weise of the Uniform Law Commission (beginning at 46:45) explains that the provision was specifically inserted in response to the governments of the Central African Republic and El Salvador adopting Bitcoin as money. They felt that under the current definition, Bitcoin would totally be accepted, and therefore it was in need of amending. He asserted that under the new definition, “Bitcoin will not be money,” but “Central Bank Digital Currency, CBDC … could be money.”

Here is the slide from Weise’s presentation.

As you can see, the ULC clearly has an agenda to ban Bitcoin from being used as a decentralized option for freedom, while officials create a central bank digital currency, as depicted in slide two.

Now, it is true that under existing UCC rules, there is nothing precluding a CBDC. But we need amendments from the red states to pre-emptively block it. Instead, this amendment implicitly anticipates joining a CBDC, while strategically and explicitly banning decentralized crypto currencies — that can’t be used to control a population — as an escape hatch for those of us who don’t want government tracking and controlling every aspect of our lives.

As Weise said in the presentation, “The revisions to Article I are very clear now that Bitcoin will not be money, because even though the definition provides for electronic money … it says that an asset that is adopted by a government as its medium of exchange will not qualify as money … if the electronic asset, such as Bitcoin, existed before it was adopted by the government. So Bitcoin, of course, exists today; it existed before El Salvador adopted it as its currency … so it will never be money for UCC purposes. The same for other kinds of crypto currencies.”

So there you have it. Officials clearly mean to pave the way for CBDC while explicitly barring all competition.

Will Governor Kristi Noem veto the bill? That is the million-dollar question. She has until next Thursday to veto the legislation; otherwise it automatically becomes law. Meanwhile, the ULC has bills in almost half the states with similar provisions. Here is the bill list from the ULC, which is lobbying assiduously to get them passed:

Bills that contain this redefinition of money already passed the Kentucky Senate, the Montana Senate, the Indiana Senate, and the North Dakota House. They have breezed through the committees in every state they have been introduced. If this is not stopped, it will be the death of our freedom. Every Republican governor and legislator needs to be informed about these UCC changes and to oppose them until this provision is changed. Moreover, they need to go on offense and pass legislation explicitly promoting decentralization and prohibiting the implementation of a central bank digital currency.

Time is of the essence. During a Treasury select committee hearing this week, Sir Jon Cunliffe, deputy governor of the Bank of England, was asked to rank the likelihood of a digital pound being instituted in the U.K. on a scale of one to 10. He answered it’s at least a seven “and maybe higher.” Members of Parliament felt he wasn’t enthusiastic enough in support of CBDC.

They are coming for our bodies, our food, our energy, our land, and our currency. They want total control. Red-state governors should be working overtime to stop this rather than being complicit in the demise of our liberty.

Back when Andrew Jackson warned about a central bank, there was no such thing as digital currency or the technology to cut off your ability to participate in human life. There was also no such thing as CRT, DEI, ESG, transgenderism, or wokeness. The amalgamation of those factors put together make CBDC the greatest threat to our life and liberty, especially when tethered to the biomedical surveillance state that was cemented during COVID. Kristi Noem and other governors must therefore echo the sentiment of President Jackson by a factor of 100: “Unless the corrupting monster should be shraven with its ill gotten power, my veto will meet it frankly and fearlessly.”