Bit By Bit

The speculative value of cryptocurrencies is hurtling towards their intrinsic value of zero. A suspicious number of those who decry us sceptics of the cashless society also claim that we are under constant threat of cyberattacks, and a surprising number of those who are forthright against the cashless society are enthusiasts for cryptocurrencies, about which the clue is in the name.

In the cashless economy, every penny that we spent would be tracked. Cryptocurrencies are beyond democratic political control. The combination of the two would be, and increasingly is, that level of tracking by those who were thus unaccountable, a problem that is not helped by the persistence of Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's electorally unmandated surrender of democratic political control over monetary policy. At least Brown did keep us out of the euro.

All that, and digital ID, too? Keir Starmer has said that we would need it to access our own money, and Blair has said that that project of his Institute and of his family would be linked to facial recognition. Expect it to be illegal to fail to produce whichever form of it a state functionary demanded, and impossible to make or receive payment without it.

There is a word for the merger of state and corporate power to the point of the physical violence on which that merger depended. Not that it is anything new in this country. If the spycops inquiry received anything like the coverage that it deserved, then digital ID would have public approval below 10 per cent. And then there is this.