Technototalitarinism, Part Three

Technototalitarinism, Part Three

Robert Gore

Some things have to be learned the hard way. By Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic Part One Part Two The GENIUS (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins) Act, signed into law by President Trump on July 18, 2025, is misnamed. It should have been named the EVIL GENIUS Act, as in one of those evil geniuses in James Bond films.

There has been enough ruckus in the alternative media (AM) about central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) to either stop their introduction or make it extremely difficult politically. Legislation was introduced in March, the Anti-CBDC Surveillance Act (H.R. 1919), and passed in the House of Representatives. It is now stuck in the Senate (S.1124), where its primary sponsor is Ted Cruz and it has five cosponsors. Trump has said he will sign it if it passes the Senate. Surely, if this legislation does pass and is signed into law, the U.S. will never experience the civil-liberties-destroying scourge of CBDCs.

The U.S. may never have CBDCs, but the evil GENIUS Act sets up one of those public-private partnerships so beloved by Trump and his technototalitarian cronies, which has the same civil-liberties-destroying potential.

Stablecoins are a digital currency emitted by private parties, tied in value to a specific currency (or, theoretically, an asset or index). In the case of so-called payment stablecoins, which the GENIUS Act primarily addresses, the stablecoins are tied to the price of the U.S. dollar (USD). 

Hence, while other cryptocurrencies fluctuate in relation to the dollar, a payment stablecoin does not. This does not mean it won’t gain or lose purchasing power; it actually will, in exactly the same amount as the U.S. dollar. Payment stablecoins simply will retain the same valuation in USD and, as a result, the user won’t be subject to capital gains taxes (which are assessed based on an asset’s valuation in comparison to the U.S. dollar).

Private stablecoins have the attributes technototalitarians love about CBDCs—surveillance and programmability—which the evil GENIUS Act enables, while CBDCs take all the heat from politicians like Trump and Cruz (he voted for the evil GENIUS Act) posing as foes of totalitarian payments technology.

Any digital transaction is documented and recorded. Third parties can both lawfully and unlawfully obtain your entire digital transaction history and draw all kinds of conclusions. For example, they can create location and movement profiles, which can be used to predict when you are not home and can be robbed. Information on unhealthy habits can be used to increase your health insurance premiums or deny coverage. Transaction and purchase data can also inform conclusions about whether you hold political beliefs unpopular with those in power and whether you are “compliant” with certain policies, such as lockdowns. The accuracy of inferences that can be drawn with modern algorithms and computing power is beyond impressive.

Programmability essentially means that stablecoins in your virtual wallet may not work for you even if they work for your neighbor for the identical transactions. The issuers of stablecoins can remotely and automatically block specific transactions or users and can freeze or seize individual users’ stablecoins. This feature of programmability, in combination with the complete surveillance of stablecoin transactions, allows for the implementation of a Chinese-style social credit score system, where unapproved behavior automatically leads to sanctions in the form of an individual’s inability to perform certain transactions.

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