Eighth Step: Turn Money into a Control Point

Cash is inconveniently independent

Cash has one special characteristic. For a small direct transaction it needs no connection. No app. No account with a payment-service provider. No server. No algorithmic approval. It does not automatically send a third party information about what you bought. If two people voluntarily exchange a banknote for a product, the transaction is complete. That is precisely why European institutions themselves now stress that cash must remain accessible and accepted. Alongside the digital-euro proposal, the European Commission also proposed rules intended to protect the legal status of cash and public access to it.[1][6][7]

That is an important safeguard. At the same time, Europe is already restricting some large cash transactions. New EU anti-money-laundering rules establish a general ceiling of €10,000 for cash payments for goods and services, while member states may set lower limits. The rationale is understandable: preventing money laundering and criminal finance. But every restriction on cash has another effect. More monetary activity moves into infrastructure where the transaction is recorded, verifiable and dependent on an intermediary. That is not yet total control. But it is a direction.

The digital euro is no longer an abstract idea

In September 2026 the digital euro does not yet exist as money that a resident can spend in a shop. But the project is far beyond an idea on paper. The European Central Bank’s preparation phase ended in October 2025. The ECB moved into the next phase of technical development and is currently preparing a pilot for which it selected 36 payment-service providers from the euro area. The pilot is intended to become operational in the second half of 2027.[2]

If the necessary European legislation is adopted, the Eurosystem wants to be ready for a possible first issuance of the digital euro in 2029. So the question is no longer:

Is central-bank digital money coming to Europe as a serious project?

The answer is already known. Yes. The question is what its long-term relationship will be with cash, commercial banks, digital identity and future payment rules.

Today’s digital euro is not designed as programmable money

This needs to be said clearly. The ECB currently explicitly rejects a model in which the central bank determines where, when or for what purpose an individual digital euro may be spent. Under the current design, the digital euro would not be a voucher that could be used only for food, or money that expires after a certain period. The ECB uses very clear language: the digital euro will not be programmable money. That is the present political and technical design.[3]

At the same time, however, the ECB is developing infrastructure for conditional payments. The distinction matters. A conditional payment does not mean the central bank decides what a person may buy. It means payment is executed automatically when a specified condition is met — for example only once a parcel has been delivered. Such a function can be very useful. But something else matters at the civilisational level: payment infrastructure can automatically execute a transaction when a pre-agreed condition is satisfied.[4]

Today the condition may be a delivered parcel. Tomorrow’s conditions are a matter for rules, legislation and services built on the infrastructure. We are not claiming that the ECB will tomorrow prohibit the purchase of meat or an airline ticket. We are making a much simpler point: the technology of money is changing from a passive medium of exchange into programmable infrastructure. And when money becomes infrastructure, the rules of that infrastructure become part of the question of freedom.

The wider world of digital money already speaks openly about programmability

Here too there is no need to guess. The Bank for International Settlements discusses programmability, tokenisation and composability as new capabilities of the future monetary system.[5] In some models, a transaction can execute only when specified conditions are met. BIS research projects have also tested private services built on retail-CBDC infrastructure, including programmable or conditional payments. This does not mean that every CBDC is automatically totalitarian.

It does mean that the technological possibility critics talk about is not fantasy. It exists. It is being developed. And the institutions themselves describe it as one of the new functions of digital money. So the real question is not:

Is programmable money technically possible?

It is. The real question is:

Who will write the rules, and what boundaries will apply in ten, twenty or thirty years?

“The state would never do that” is not a sufficient answer

History does not require us to invent the future. It is enough to look at what could already be done with today’s banking system. In February 2022, during the Freedom Convoy protests, the Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Act and emergency economic measures. Financial institutions were empowered or required to temporarily cease providing financial services to individuals and businesses associated with unlawful blockades. The measure did not require the ordinary judicial order for every individual account.[8]

It covered bank accounts, investments, lending products, some insurance products and cryptocurrency addresses. By 23 February, official data showed 246 financial products had been frozen. The measure was temporary and the accounts were subsequently unfrozen.[9][10] But the precedent is clear. A modern state can, in emergency circumstances, use financial infrastructure as a means of pressure on behaviour. We do not need to settle here whether the specific use in Canada was justified.[9][10]

For our path, something else matters. The mechanism exists. And it works. If a person’s life is almost completely digital, exclusion from financial infrastructure can be more effective than imprisonment. You do not need to take away freedom of movement. It is enough that they cannot pay for fuel. You do not need to close a business. It is enough that its account cannot process payment. You do not need to prohibit travel. It is enough that they cannot buy a ticket. That is the power of the financial control point.

Identity and money are moving closer together

The previous step on the path dealt with digital identity. This one deals with digital money. We should not overlook that both infrastructures are developing at the same time. The digital euro is intended to be used through banks or other payment-service providers. The user would have to be identified and would be subject to anti-money-laundering, counter-terrorist-financing and anti-fraud rules in ways similar to other digital financial services. The EUDI Wallet, meanwhile, is developing as standardised digital identity infrastructure for banking, payment and other services.

Today these are different systems governed by different rules. But the direction is clear: identity is becoming digitally verifiable, money digitally executable. When identity and payment meet in the same digital economy, a transaction is no longer merely:

money moved from hand to hand.

It also becomes a data event. Who. To whom. How much. When. Where. Through which provider. In some cases, why. This has enormous benefits for preventing crime, tax evasion and fraud. But the same architecture has another characteristic. It enables exclusion.

The most dangerous currency is not a digital currency

The most dangerous currency is a currency without an alternative. As long as cash exists, there is at least a limited parallel channel. As long as there are multiple banks, multiple providers, multiple payment methods and the possibility of direct exchange, no single point has complete control over a person’s economic life. That is why the wrong question is:

Is the digital euro dangerous in itself?

A better question is:

What happens if digital money eventually becomes the only practically usable money?

Imagine a society in which shops hardly accept cash. Taxes are digital. Wages are digital. Transport is digital. Rent is digital. Healthcare is digital. Identity is digital. All major transactions pass through controlled providers. Then nothing has to be formally prohibited. It is enough to lose access to the infrastructure. That is why preserving cash is more than nostalgia for banknotes. It is a question of redundancy. A free system needs an emergency exit.

At first everything will be presented as protection

As with every other step on the path, each measure will have a rational explanation. Preventing money laundering. Terrorist financing. Tax evasion. Fraud. The grey economy. Cybercrime. Financing criminal organisations. All of these problems are real. But the history of power teaches us that it is not enough to ask: Why was the power introduced? We must also ask: What does it enable once it exists? First the system is used against the criminal. Then the terrorist.

Then the sanctioned person. Then the unlawful protest. And what if the political culture one day changes? What if a future government expands the definition of “dangerous behaviour”? What if one day it is not necessary to commit a crime but merely to violate an administrative rule? What if financial sanction becomes a routine form of behavioural administration? This is not a claim that it will happen. It is a question every person should ask before the infrastructure becomes irreversible.

Money can become the enforcement mechanism of rules

Imagine a fully digital economy of the future. We do not need one grand social-credit score. We do not need one red button in a secret room. It is enough to have permitted and prohibited conditions in the rules of different systems. An insurer sets a condition. A platform sets a condition. The state sets a condition. A bank sets a condition. An identity provider confirms an attribute. The payment infrastructure executes the result. The person gets the impression that the computer made the decision. But the computer decided nothing. Someone wrote the rules.

And once a rule is embedded in infrastructure, its enforcement becomes quiet, automatic and almost invisible. That is the essential difference between a classical law and a programmed system. Under classical law, someone must identify a violation, initiate a process and enforce a sanction. In digital infrastructure, a restriction can occur in a millisecond. “Transaction declined.” That is all.

What if that is the ultimate destination?

What if cash is not disappearing only because cards are more convenient? What if a fully digital economy is the ideal infrastructure for a society in which every person can be identified, every transaction linked to them and access to money adjusted according to rules? Today we do not have evidence for such an ultimate purpose. But individual building blocks exist. Digital identity exists. Central-bank digital money is being developed. Conditional payments are being developed. Programmability of the wider world of digital money exists as a technological concept.[4]

Financial institutions can already freeze access to funds today on the basis of legal measures. Cash transactions are legally restricted. Every individual step has a rational explanation. But this series does not ask only whether each step is rational. It asks: Where does the road lead if all the steps continue in the same direction?

Freedom requires the ability to transact without permission

That does not mean the financial system should have no rules. It does not mean crime should not be prosecuted. It does not mean we should reject digital payments. It means something much more basic. A society that wants to remain free must guard very carefully the boundary between money as a tool of the person and money as a tool for managing the person. If that boundary disappears, money may one day still look like money.

The same number will appear on the screen. The currency will have the same name. Payment will take less than a second. But beneath the surface something will be different. Every transaction may become a question: Does the system allow it? And a person who must always receive the system’s answer before using their own money is no longer fully master of that money. The next step is almost self-evident. Once the system can see who you are and how you pay, only one thing is missing.

A measure of your behaviour. How much you spend. How much you travel. How much energy you use. What you eat. How you live. Once behaviour is measured, it can be compared. Once compared, it can be scored. And once scored, it can be linked to reward or restriction. That is the ninth step. Measure Their Behaviour.