The e-Peso: Central Bank's Big Brother

The Central Bank wants to sell us as innovation what is actually a digital shackle. They are reviving the idea of a "digital currency," as if Uruguay were at the forefront of progress. The truth is much more sinister: what is being prepared is every bureaucrat's wet dream, the financial Big Brother with the ability to monitor every last peso (every last peso) we spend.

They tell us that "we need to modernize," that "the world is already testing it." Since when do we copy China as an example of freedom? There, the digital yuan is already used to reward the obedient and punish the dissenters. All under the pretext of efficiency. What is coming is money that expires if you don't spend it quickly, accounts frozen if you protest too much, taxes deducted instantly with no right to dispute. Orwell couldn't have imagined it better: the bill turned into an algorithm and freedom into an illusion.

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The e-Peso pilot in 2017 was a failure, and with good reason: nobody needed it. But like every state obsession, what fails is insisted upon until it takes hold. Now they dress it up with pretty words: "governance," "fresh perspective," "best international practices." Empty rhetoric to disguise what is at its core a simple assault: the State sticking its nose into every pocket, every market, every café.

Do you want privacy? Forget it. Do you want independence? Impossible. Cash is still a refuge from the eye of power: a bill passes from hand to hand without accountability. But with a state digital currency, every movement is recorded. The money would no longer be yours, it would be a license granted by the BCU that can be taken away whenever it wants.

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The problem is not technical or about "cybersecurity." The real problem is political. With a CBDC, the State becomes your banker, your auditor, and your jailer. All at the same time. Until now, the monopoly on money issuance served to devalue and silently take away our wealth, with the e-Peso the theft will be out in the open and with a digital receipt.

This is not about modernization, it's about control. About a State that can't stand the existence of corners of freedom outside its radar. The answer should be clear: no to the monetary Big Brother. We want competition, not monopoly; free innovation, not a bureaucratic experiment. Money must be an instrument of independence, not the electronic leash of a government that dreams of controlling everything.

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The e-Peso is not the future: it's the darkest past in technological disguise. It's the Uruguayan version of Big Brother, and if we let it advance, there will be no corner of daily life left outside its gaze.