The Great Taking will be used to usher in CBDCs + Digital ID

A Great Taking–style event is the perfect “problem” that justifies CBDC + global Digital ID as the “solution” to their Debt/Liquidity constraints and legitimacy problem.

Photo by Aldo Houtkamp on Unsplash

I recently had to increase my odds of a Great Taking (mass expropriation) event happening in the near future.

If you are new to the Great Taking, watch David Rogers Webb’s documentary on odysee or read his free book named “The Great Taking”.

One of the reasons is that consent has been massively deteriorating (which is mostly a good thing) and I think the Controllers will use a Great Taking type event to usher in the CBDC + Digital ID era.

If the Controllers rob everyone in an artificial financial system collapse, a massive cyber attack, or w/e mass crisis they pick, people won't have much of a choice but to accept their CBDC + Digital ID.

Thomas Petterfy, the founder of Interactive Brokers perfectly describes the Great Taking in an interview filmed a few years ago.

There will be crashes and then there will be a final crash - a final crash from which there is no return. This is because there is social dissonance and we don’t have solid financial basis anymore — we just keep adding to the debt, so eventually this will lead to the final collapse and when the system comes back, it will take years for it to come back. The companies and the stocks will not exist when the system comes back again, so the stocks that you end up with will be worthless. It will be a reset.

And of course, you also have the World Economic Forum predictions from 2016, in which they famously predicted that by 2030: “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy“.

I wrote about what “You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy“ might look like in this article.

You might have also heard of UN’s 2030 agenda which is practically the same thing.

To give you 1 more data point: using Federal Reserve distribution data summarized by multiple outlets:

• The top 1% by wealth hold roughly 40–45% of all U.S. corporate equities and mutual fund shares.

• The top 10% hold something like 80–90%+ of all equities; one analysis of Fed data has top 10% at ~90%+ of stock and mutual-fund wealth, bottom 50% at ~1%.

You don't have to rob very many people to actually execute the "Great Reset".

It can easily be sold as: "protecting the many from the excesses of the few".

Of course, the few will quietly be robbed via inflation, forced conversions, and taxes.

You probably have also noticed the push toward socialism especially with this Mamdani actor (redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor to reduce "inequality").

Who knows when they decide it’s go time. My best guess is sometime before 2033, but I could be wrong.

In this article, I’ll explore why a Great Taking-style event is the perfect “problem” that justifies CBDC + Digital ID as the “solution” to their Debt/Liquidity constraints and legitimacy problem.

The Atlantic Council is a great place official narrative website for you to track Central Bank Digital Currency developments.

Here are some of their “Key findings”:

• 137 countries & currency unions, representing 98% of global GDP, are exploring a CBDC. In May 2020 that number was only 35. Currently, 72 countries are in the advanced phase of exploration—development, pilot, or launch.

• There is a new high of 49 CBDC pilot projects around the world. 3 countries have fully launched a digital currency — the Bahamas, Jamaica, and Nigeria. All three countries are focused on expanding the reach of their CBDCs domestically.

• Emerging markets are driving global retail CBDC growth to reduce cash use, enhance financial inclusion, and improve regulatory oversight. This trend is also a response to the growing proliferation of US dollar-backed stablecoins internationally.

• The ECB is advancing a “global euro moment” as it pilots the digital euro, aiming to strengthen the euro’s international role. Similarly, the PBoC is promoting the digital yuan as part of its strategy for a multipolar currency system. Both efforts signal a competitive push toward currency internationalization through CBDCs.

• Digital yuan (e-CNY) is still the largest CBDC pilot in the world. In June 2024, total transaction volume reached 7 trillion e-CNY ($986 billion) in 17 provincial regions across sectors such as education, healthcare, and tourism. This figure is nearly four times the 1.8 trillion yuan ($253 billion) recorded by the People’s Bank of China in June 2023.

• India’s e-rupee is now the second-largest CBDC pilot. Digital rupee in circulation rose to ₹10.16 billion ($122 million) by March 2025, up 334% from ₹2.34 billion ($28 million) in 2024. In 2025, the Reserve Bank of India is expanding both retail and wholesale CBDCs with new use cases, offline functionality, and broader participation.

• The US is an outlier amongst its peer central banks. In 2025, President Trump issued an executive order to halt all work on a retail CBDC, making the US the only country to do so. However, the US continues to engage in wholesale cross-border payments research through Project Agorá, an initiative in collaboration with six other major central banks.

• Countries prefer to take a phased approach to piloting their CBDCs. They use controlled environments like regulatory sandboxes to gradually test and scale implementation. This progressive rollout allows them to assess technological resilience, address privacy and security concerns, evaluate user adoption, and ensure interoperability with existing financial systems.

1. Let’s make the thought experiment concrete

Treat the “Great Taking” as:

• A systemic collateral / custody rug:

  • People discover their “owned” securities (ETFs, brokerage assets, deposits) are legally junior to pledgees and central-bank-secured creditors.

  • In a big refi/liquidity accident, collateral chains are reorganized; a chunk of “your” assets is:

    • haircut,

    • frozen,

    • or forcibly converted into some new claim tier (longer maturity / lower priority).

• It’s not “everyone loses everything overnight” (too destabilizing); it’s:

  • 10–40% haircuts in some products,

  • bail-ins at banks,

  • pensions forced into new instruments,

  • with a thin veneer of legality (prospectus fine print, CSD rules, resolution regimes).

You wake up to: “You never really owned what you thought. You owned a claim on a claim”.

Now assume the Controllers across US/EU/China/Russia are aligned enough (through BIS/FSB/IMF/BCBS–style fora) on end-state rails, even if they pretend to be enemies on TV.

2. Why a Great Taking solves some of their blocking constraints

Right now, rolling out CBDC + hard Digital ID has real frictions:

• Too much legacy trust inertia in the current system:

  • People (esp. older cohorts) still think “my bank account + my broker are safe enough”.

• Civil-liberties push-back if you openly say:

  • “We want full traceability, programmable money, and per-wallet controls.”

• Bank lobbies: they don’t want to be disintermediated by retail CBDC accounts.

• FX / capital-flight risk if one bloc moves too aggressively alone.

A Great Taking changes the slope:

1. Destroys trust in the old, but not in the State itself (if managed right).

   • If the event is framed as:

     • “Shadow rehypothecation & unregulated financial engineering broke the system”,

     • “We need public rails with full transparency and safety”,

   • then the State can pose as rescuer:

     • “We didn’t fail; they abused the old fragile system. Now we’ll fix it.”

2. Creates a huge pool of angry-but-captive victims.

   • Millions of households, funds, and corporates are suddenly:

     • frozen,

     • haircut,

     • or “bailed-in” into worse claims.

   • They have to interact with whatever “claims resolution portal” is set up.

   • That portal can be: Digital ID + CBDC account onboarding funnel.

3. Justifies “never again” reforms that just happen to match CBDC/ID wish-list.

   • “We must prevent opaque rehypothecation.” →
     Single source of truth ledger for all financial claims.

   • “We must know the real beneficial owner at all times.” →
     Global KYC/ID standard + wallet-level identity.

   • “We must see systemic risk in real time.” →
     Always-on data-sharing across banks, brokers, custodians, and CB.

Everything they need to maximize Debt/Liquidity control and Gross Consent Product management is suddenly framed as:

• “The minimum responsible step after this catastrophe.”

3. The Hegelian script: Problem → Reaction → Solution

3.1 Problem: Great Taking shock

• Debt/Liquidity context:
  They’ve run through:

  • the QE, liquidity over-injection phase,

  • then the under-injection/discipline phase,

  • then accidentally pushed one refi wall too far (credit, repo, pensions, or sovereign).

• Crash:

  • collateral gets haircut,

  • some CCPs/ICSDs/CSDs reveal their legal seniority,

  • beneficial owners find out they’re structurally subordinated.

Net effect:

• Households / funds lose a visible slice of “safe” wealth.

• Legalese is technically correct, but politically toxic.

• Gross Consent Product (consent stock) drops even further.

3.2 Reaction: Fear, anger, and searching for safety

The mass mood:

• “The system is rigged; I never really owned anything.”

• “I want something that can’t be taken / rehypothecated without my knowledge.”

• “I want the government to guarantee this can’t happen again.”

They won’t say “give me CBDC and a global digital passport”, but they will say:

• “I want guaranteed money I can always access.”

• “I want one account where I know my assets are safe and insured.”

• “I want someone to be clearly responsible.”

In low Gross Consent Product, you can’t let this fester; you must quickly pivot to:

3.3 Solution: “Safe, modern, fully-guaranteed money and identity rails”

Cue:

• Retail CBDC, framed as:

  • risk-free deposits directly at the central bank,

  • with explicit guarantees and maybe default insurance,

  • “your money can never be rehypothecated like those brokerage assets.”

• National (and then cross-border) Digital ID:

  • required to file claims, receive compensation, open your CBDC wallet, reconcile what’s left of your assets.

  • branded as “protecting your ownership rights; we must know it’s really you”.

• Tokenized securities on permissioned ledgers:

  • all equities, bonds, funds now live as entries on a regulated, whitelisted chain (or functionally equivalent database).

  • only KYC’d entities with approved wallets can hold/transfer.

The story sells itself:

• “The old fragmented system allowed hidden pledging and rehypothecation.
  In the new system every claim is registered, every owner is known, and
  your CBDC account is legally senior and immune to rehypothecation”.

This is exactly the Debt/Liquidity / control optimum:

• Direct retail interface: CB → citizen balance sheet.

• Full mapping from identity → assets → flows.

• Programmable clamps for capital controls, tax, sanctions, ESG, etc.

4. Operational mechanics: how Great Taking → CBDC/ID concretely

Let’s walk through it as if the Controllers designed the sequence.

Step 0 — Pre-crisis groundwork (we are already here)

• Legal plumbing:

  • Central securities depository/Central Counterparty Clearinghouse (CCP) rules that make participants, not end investors, the legal owner.

  • Resolution regimes codifying bail-in, hierarchy of claims, “financial stability” overrides.

• Technical pilots:

  • Small-scale CBDC pilots, Fast Payment rails, national digital ID systems.

  • Bank-level KYC/AML + FATF/Travel Rule creeping into crypto/stablecoins.

• Narrative groundwork:

  • Reports on “settlement risks”, “fragmentation of post-trade”, “need for real-time data”, “beneficial ownership opacity”.

The Controllers know:

• The next big shock will stress these pipes.

• They might or might not know exact timing or trigger, but they’ve laid the legal/technical rails.

Step 1 — Accident and selective or full Great Taking

• A Debt/Liquidity under-injection into a big refi wall.
  Something snaps:

  • LDI-style pensions,

  • a major custodian,

  • a big broker/dealer,

  • or an ICSD-level issue.

• To stabilize core funding and collateral, they:

  • Ring-fence core banks and sovereigns with facilities and swap lines.

  • “Resolve” certain intermediaries with bail-ins & collateral grabs.

  • Let some beneficial owners eat haircuts according to existing legal seniority.

This is the Great Taking:

• Not a new law; just the first time the full legal stack is applied at scale.

• People see the true hierarchy: central bank + CCP/custodian + repo lenders at top, you at the bottom.

Step 2 — Freeze / claims portal

Large swathes of balances are:

• frozen for “reconciliation”,

• haircut but not yet fully recognized,

• locked in resolution vehicles.

Controllers stand up Claims & Compensation Portals:

• “Log in to see your updated entitlements.”

• “We need to verify your identity and link you to your beneficial ownership records.”

• Digital ID becomes a prerequisite to even see what you have left.

They can even say:

• “Part of the chaos came from unclear, outdated identity records.
  To protect you, we must link each asset to a strong, unique digital identity.”

Step 3 — CBDC as compensation wrapper

Then they offer the carrot:

• “We can’t fully restore all your old positions, but:

  • you will receive X units of ‘SafeMoney’ (CBDC),

  • plus some long-dated claim on residual assets,

  • plus priority access to future issuance / UBI / support”.

• For pensions:

  • “Your fund is restructured, but we’ll top up shortfalls via CBDC-denominated state contributions into your new digital pension account.”

• For retail:

  • “Move your remaining bank deposits into CBDC accounts and they’ll be fully insured / ring-fenced from future rehypothecation.”

In other words:

• Use CBDC as compensation currency for Great Taking losses.

• Once people accept, CBDC penetration goes from pilot to mass adoption in one step.

Step 4 — Rewrite the rules around the new rails

Post-crisis reforms:

1. Mandate that all systemically relevant financial assets exist only in tokenized, centrally registered form:

   • no more bearer analogues,

   • no more opaque chains of intermediaries.

2. Tie all significant asset ownership to Digital ID:

   • “to protect your property rights”,

   • “to prevent terrorists, oligarchs, dark money from distorting markets”.

3. Ratchet reporting & programmability:

   • caps on anonymous transfers,

   • sector-based spend controls,

   • automatic tax/withholding in CBDC,

   • real-time sanctioning/blocking of flagged wallets.

4. Shrink the relative role of commercial bank deposits:

   • gradually incentivize migration into CBDC for “safety”,

   • let banks become front-ends / credit distributors sitting on top of CBDC base money.

Now the entire Debt/Liquidity cycle is programmable at account-level:

• CB can run:

  • targeted negative rates,

  • expiry of stimulus,

  • conditional UBI,

  • capital controls,

  • instant “bail-ins” by haircutting certain categories of wallets.

• And they can see the effect in real time.

5. Global coordination: US / EU / China / Russia on the same stage

The Controllers are effectively cross-border aligned:

• BIS / IMF / FSB-style fora become convergence nodes:

  • define a “post-crisis financial architecture” blueprint,

  • harmonize KYC/AML/ID standards,

  • treat CBDC and Digital ID as the “Basel III for individuals”.

You’d get:

• China: “We already have e-CNY and national ID; we’re just continuing modernization.”

• EU: “We’re deploying a Digital Euro + eID as part of Capital Markets Union and consumer protection after the scandal.”

• US: “We prefer private sector front-ends, but we must implement a digital dollar for resilience and to maintain dollar dominance.”

• Russia/BRICS: “We must secure ourselves against Western financial weapons; here is our own CBDC + ID stack.”

Publicly adversarial; structurally convergent:

• All major blocs now run people and assets through state-linked digital rails.

• Inter-bloc bridges are permissioned and fully surveilled.

Great Taking provides the common exogenous shock that justifies the convergent response.

6. Why this is easier after the crisis than before

Without the Great Taking:

• You’re asking people to voluntarily trade residual privacy and flexibility for abstract “technological progress”.

• Banks/fintechs could lobby hard against disintermediating CBDC.

• Civil-liberties arguments still have traction.

• Political cost of pushing too hard is high; Gross Consent Product is already fragile.

After the Great Taking:

• People are in acute loss, confusion, and fear.

• The question shifts from:

  • “Do you want CBDC & Digital ID?”
    to

  • “Do you want the government to guarantee this never happens again and compensate what we can?”

The political calculus:

• Refusing CBDC/Digital ID = you’re “defending the broken, corrupt old system.”

• Rejecting them looks like protecting the intermediaries who just “stole” people’s assets.

So from their objective function:

minimize(cost_of_control + career_risk + embarrassment + legal_exposure)
− λ · legitimacy_depletion_rate

The Great Taking + CBDC/ID solution is optimal:

• They show decisiveness (“we fixed the broken system”).

• They shift blame to:

  • “globalized finance”, “unregulated intermediaries”, “antiquated plumbing”.

• They gain finer control over liquidity & capital going forward.

• They rebuild legitimacy by being the provider of “safe money” post-crisis.

7. How this dovetails with the Debt/Liquidity cycle lens

Place the Great Taking into the Debt/Liquidity cycle lens:

• Phase 4 (Under-injection): They pull liquidity to show discipline.

• Phase 5 (Accident/Refi crisis): Something big fails to roll; Great Taking event hits.

• Phase 6 (Shock & Patch):

  • Instead of just QE and facilities, the patch = structural reset:

    • bail-ins,

    • forced conversions,

    • Great Taking of subordinated claims,

    • and rollout of CBDC/ID as the new base rails.

From then on:

• Debt/Liquidity management becomes more granular:

  • Instead of blunt QE/QT and bank-reg levers, they can:

    • change interest on specific CBDC wallet buckets,

    • freeze or throttle high-risk segments,

    • direct credit precisely,

    • vary liquidity constraints by identity category.

• Gross Consent Product management is more direct:

  • They can drop targeted CBDC “relief” into precise cohorts whose consent is most at risk.

  • They can reward compliant behavior (vax, ESG, social behavior) with perks; penalize others with friction.

In that sense, CBDC/ID is the Controller version of “higher resolution monetary policy + social policy in one rail”.

A Great Taking gives them:

• The mandate (“never again”),

• The political cover (“this is a consumer-protection reform”),

• And the captive user base (everyone who got hit and needs to be made “whole-ish”).

8. Where the risk/alpha sits from my vantage point

Obvious implications:

1. State-embedded rails win even more.

   • Identity providers, compliance/KYC rails, provenance & audit, CBDC tech, payment infra, AI governance OS (Palantir, MSFT-Gov, serious cyber, payments ID rails).

   • Great Taking + CBDC rollout = multi-decade spend in exactly their wheelhouse.

   • The function is protected and guaranteed, the wrapper (stock) is not. You’ll likely lose most/all of the wrapper, while the function continues to flourish.

2. Legacy intermediaries become Great Taking fodder.

   • Brokers, custodians, undercapitalized banks, shadow credit conduits:

     • are the villains in the post-mortem narrative,

     • get rugged / consolidated,

     • lose part of their franchise to CBDC-based rails.

3. Self-custody escapes shrink but become more valuable.

   • True self-custody BTC/Monero/metal/off-grid assets become more attractive to a small slice of people who internalize what just happened.

   • Most will flee into CBDC “safety”; a minority will run the other way.

   • That minority’s willingness to pay for sovereignty jumps.

4. Regime risk increases, not decreases.

   • Once the CBDC/ID rails are in, you’ve given the Controllers a blunt instrument:

     • they can run more aggressive financial repression,

     • pull forward future demand,

     • and “solve” future refi crises with another round of targeted seizure / haircut / redirect.

From my perspective, the main learning:

• Great Taking is not the end of the game; it’s the bootstrap event for the next, tighter control architecture.

A Great Taking–type crisis is almost the ideal pretext for the CBDC/Digital ID era:

• It exposes just enough injustice and fragility to justify radical reform,

• while preserving the State as the only actor with enough perceived legitimacy to “fix it”,

• and it lets them swap a messy, semi-decentralized collateral lattice for a clean, centrally-viewable, programmable ledger of humans and claims.

That’s exactly what their objective function wants.

Read:

• What are the best “Great Taking” (expropriation) hedges

• The Great Taking

Watch:

• The Great Taking by David Rogers Webb