Globalist planners in Brussels, Ottawa and Washington are racing to “upgrade” you from a flesh-and-blood citizen into a tagged, tracked data object whose primary value lies in your transaction history and behavioral profile.
The core of that upgrade is simple:
- Biometric digital identity for every person
- Programmable digital money for every transaction
Once those two layers are fully in place, there is no “back to normal”. The freedom we grew up with does not survive that combination.
This piece builds on the analysis of finance and tech writer Shanaka Perera, and the follow-up by Leo Hohmann, who argues that the EU is merely the front edge of a global transformation. (leohohmann.substack.com)
The EU’s 2027 sprint toward programmable money
Perera describes what he calls the most radical reconstruction of the EU’s monetary system since the euro was launched in 1999. The target date: fully operational by 2027, not 2030. The Great Reset’s timetable is being pulled forward. (leohohmann.substack.com)
He summarises the EU “regulatory trinity” like this:
- Restrictions on cash transactions
- Gradual lowering of legal limits for paying in cash
- Stronger reporting requirements and penalties
- Mandatory surveillance of crypto
- All serious crypto movements pushed into full KYC/AML
- “Anonymous” crypto on- and off-ramps steadily choked off
- Digital euro prototype by 2027
- European Central Bank building the infrastructure now
- Legislation expected around 2026, pilots after that (Brookings)
Officially, this architecture is being sold as a way to fight an estimated €700 billion a year in money laundering and financial crime in the EU – a staggering number that policymakers repeat as the justification for deeper financial surveillance. (Latham & Watkins)
The price of this “war on dirty money” is obvious:
for roughly 340 million people in the euro area, practical financial privacy is meant to disappear.
Not just Brussels: Canada and Trump’s America are building the same stack
Hohmann’s point is that this isn’t “just an EU problem”. Other Western states are building the same three-layer stack – identity, money, surveillance – with slightly different branding. (leohohmann.substack.com)
Canada: digital ID buried in the 2025 budget
According to Slay News, Canada’s federal government has quietly advanced a national digital ID system by tucking key language into the 2025 federal budget – particularly for people accessing Employment Insurance and Old Age Security. (Slay News)
The pattern is familiar:
- Start with benefits and “convenience”
- Normalise digital ID as the default access key
- Then expand it to other domains over time
United States: the GENIUS Act and the “upgrade” of the dollar
In the US, Donald Trump has been explicit that the current system of coins, paper cash and paper checks is “decades out of date” and needs a technological overhaul. That overhaul is now law.
In July 2025 he signed the GENIUS Act, the first major federal law providing a comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins – dollar-pegged digital tokens issued by banks and other licensed entities. (The White House)
The GENIUS Act does not create a US central bank digital currency (CBDC) by itself, but it:
- Pulls major dollar-backed stablecoins directly under federal supervision
- Encourages banks to issue their own digital dollars under strict rules
- Moves day-to-day payments further onto programmable, traceable rails
Combine that with Trump’s repeated calls for a “good tracking system” for everyone entering and leaving the US – effectively a movement-tracking digital ID framework – and you get the same architecture we see in Europe and Canada, just built from a different angle.
“It’s not about safety. It’s about control.”
The sales pitch for this global upgrade is always the same:
- We must protect you from fraud, money laundering and identity theft
- We must modernise an “outdated” financial system
- We will make everything faster, more convenient, more inclusive
You’re not being coerced, you’re told – you’re being invited to become a more efficient, more secure “digital citizen”. Accept the new digital wallet. Register your biometric ID. Link everything “for your own safety”.
Hohmann frames this as a kind of “beast system” in biblical language: once you step inside the cage – once your wallet, ID and daily survival are wired into a unified data structure – backing out becomes almost impossible.
Even if you’re not religious, the underlying point stands:
A system built to see and rate everything you do has a qualitatively different kind of power than anything we’ve seen before.
And unlike old-school dictatorships, this one doesn’t need to kick your door in.
It can just quietly turn your accounts off.
Three pillars of the new financial order
Perera’s analysis breaks the emerging order into three interconnected pillars: (leohohmann.substack.com)
The slow killing of cash
Cash won’t be banned overnight. It will simply become:
- Increasingly restricted by law (limits, reporting, “suspicious” flags)
- Increasingly unwelcome in commerce (shops refusing cash “for safety”)
As those two curves advance, cash shrinks from a universal medium into a marginal, slightly suspicious niche.
Mandatory biometric digital identity
To participate in the “new economy” you will need:
- A state-approved digital ID, often tied to biometrics
- Full linkage between that ID and your bank accounts, wallets and crypto
Crypto will not disappear; it will just be dragged under full surveillance through KYC, AML and travel-rule style regulations. To move any meaningful amount, you’ll have to identify yourself in machine-readable form.
The CBDC or “digital euro/dollar” as the keystone
Once:
- Cash is marginal
- Stablecoins and private credit money live under tight new laws
- Digital IDs are standard
…it becomes trivial to roll out a central bank digital currency on top – whether it’s called the digital euro, FedCoin, or anything else.
By that point, the system doesn’t even need to ban alternatives. It can simply bias all incentives toward the official rails until most people have no realistic choice.
From freedom of choice to algocracy
Writers like Joe Allen use the term “algocracy” – rule by algorithm – to describe the endpoint of this transformation. (Facebook)
Today, algorithms:
- Decide which posts you see on social media
- Shape what news reaches you
- Suggest what you should buy, watch and believe
Tomorrow, the same logic extends to your money and your legal identity.
A commentator in Liberty Conservative News makes the point starkly: from a liberty perspective, this is not a minor technical debate about payment rails. It is a civilizational question.
Classic freedom is the ability to make choices according to your own reason, conscience and informed consent. But when:
- Algorithms silently filter what you see
- Recommendation engines nudge what you buy
- Scoring models decide which political messages reach you
- And financial systems can reward or punish behavior in real time
…then machine logic starts to replace human judgment as the main operating system of daily life.
The threat isn’t that “AI is evil”. The threat is that:
- It is powerful,
- It is opaque,
- And it is increasingly wielded by people and institutions not accountable to you.
Their rules are written in code and internal policy documents, not in public debate. Their models are trained on data sets you will never see. And their systems are wired directly into the core of your existence: access to money, services, travel, communication.
Technocracy is not “just another tech wave”
Technocracy critic Patrick Wood warns that this wave is unlike previous technological shifts. It is not just another case of “horses replaced by tractors”: tractors didn’t track your movements, score your social behavior, or lock you out of the food system. (Technocracy News)
Silicon Valley voices like Marc Andreessen happily predict that AI will crash wages and prices and bring about a kind of deflationary “utopia”. In Wood’s view, that’s not utopia at all – it’s a massive deflationary depression dressed up as progress, overseen by people he bluntly calls “idiots leading the charge to destroy humanity.” (Technocracy News)
Add to that Yuval Noah Harari’s repeated claim that in the coming era, most humans will become “useless” to the economic machine – valuable mainly as data sources – and you see the worldview behind this infrastructure: a small technocratic elite at the controls, a vast population monitored, nudged and managed like a resource. (Facebook)
“Once you’re in, there is no going back”
Hohmann’s warning is blunt:
Once biometric digital ID and programmable money are fully deployed, there will be no easy way back.
Rights are quietly replaced by revocable privileges:
- “Approved” transactions go through instantly
- “Questionable” ones get delayed, reviewed, flagged
- “Forbidden” ones simply fail
Your ability to live a normal life becomes conditional on staying inside the approved lane – politically, medically, socially.
None of this arrives overnight. It’s implemented step by step:
- First, voluntary apps and “convenient” wallets
- Then, incentives and discounts for using them
- Then, slow marginalisation of old methods
- Finally, de facto dependency
By the time the average person realises what has been built, the exit routes are already fenced off.
What can ordinary people actually do?
You can’t personally stop the ECB, Ottawa or Washington from building out this architecture. But you are not helpless.
Practical steps are simple, but not painless:
- Use cash whenever it’s legal and possible.
If a business refuses cash even where it remains legal tender, ask why – and if you can, walk away. - Prefer small, local businesses over giant platforms.
Yes, it may cost a bit more. In return you get real humans, not algorithmic gatekeepers, controlling your access to goods and services. - Resist unnecessary digital ID demands.
Push back whenever an app or service demands biometric or government-ID verification beyond what the law requires. - Support political and legal efforts that defend cash, restrict CBDC programmability, and limit the scope of digital ID systems.
None of this is glamorous. But it buys time and room to maneuver while the system is still under construction.
📊 What do these numbers really mean?
The article mentions some very big figures. Here’s what they roughly translate to:
- €700 billion in annual money laundering and financial crime
- If you spread that evenly across 340 million euro-area residents, it’s about €2,000 per person per year. (Latham & Watkins)
- Compared to an EU-wide GDP of around €16 trillion, that’s roughly 4–5% of total output. (Latham & Watkins)
- 340 million citizens in the euro area
- That’s more than two-thirds of the entire EU population, whose daily financial life could be reshaped by this new system.
Framed this way, it becomes clearer why officials are willing to demand total transparency over everyone’s finances: they see it as the justified cost of “protecting” the system from a few percentage points of abuse.
The civilizational question is whether you are willing to trade anonymous, cash-based freedom for a fully traceable, programmable money grid in the name of that fight.
📚 Sources
- Shanaka Perera’s original analysis (Substack note):
https://substack.com/home/post/p-178473086 (substack.com) - Leo Hohmann, “Globalists in the E.U., Canada, and yes even Trump’s America are preparing you for digital transhumanism” (Substack):
10 days ago · 136 likes · 71 comments · Leo Hohmann
- (leohohmann.substack.com)
- Slay News, “Canadian Government Quietly Advances Plan for National Digital ID” (Nov 10, 2025):
https://slaynews.com/news/canadian-government-quietly-advances-plan-national-digital-id/ (Slay News) - White House Fact Sheet: “President Donald J. Trump Signs GENIUS Act into Law” (July 18, 2025):
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-signs-genius-act-into-law/ (The White House) - Latham & Watkins, “The GENIUS Act of 2025: Stablecoin Legislation Adopted in the US”:
https://www.lw.com/en/insights/the-genius-act-of-2025-stablecoin-legislation-adopted-in-the-us (Latham & Watkins) - Technocracy News / Patrick Wood, “Proof That AI Is Destroying Jobs In One Chart”:
https://www.technocracy.news/2025/11/06/ (Technocracy News) - Liberty Conservative News (front page):