... but, of course, it’s all just a consultation process with absolutely no set agenda.  Nothing to do with Davos, no no.  Perfectly sensible, really, when cash use is falling (actually it’s rising) and when the economy is digitising (even if Sterling fully meets that requirement already).  And, of course, expectations that the new currency will be, y’know, programmable are just conspiracy theories.  Naturally.  I mean, who would think that any freedom-loving, not at all totalitarian and globalist Western government could ever contemplate, oh, say freezing peoples’ bank accounts?

Here is the meat of the DT’s characteristically anodyne article:

‘Digital pound’ possible by 2030 in bid to combat falling use of cash
State-backed virtual currency ‘likely’ as Bank of England and Treasury back ‘Britcoin’ project

The Bank of England and Treasury will next week throw their weight behind a “digital pound” as they set out a roadmap to introduce a new central bank currency by 2030.

Andrew Bailey and Jeremy Hunt are expected to say it is “likely” that a new form of money will be needed as cash use continues to decline in an increasingly digital economy.

It is understood that any new state-backed digital currency – which has been dubbed “Britcoin” in the press - would sit alongside cash. However, the plans are likely to fuel fears that physical currency could one day be phased out altogether.

The decision by Mr Hunt and Mr Bailey to throw their weight behind the project comes almost two years after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak set up a taskforce as Chancellor to explore whether to create a so-called central bank digital currency (CBDC).

“On the basis of our work to date, the Bank of England and HM Treasury judge that it is likely a digital pound will be needed in the future,” the Bank of England Governor and current Chancellor say in extracts of a consultation paper seen by The Telegraph.

“It is too early to commit to build the infrastructure for one, but we are convinced that further preparatory work is justified,” Mr Hunt and Mr Bailey will say ...

The Bank and Treasury will launch a four-month consultation in which businesses, academics and the wider public will be invited to share their views on the launch of a digital pound ...

Officials have identified 2025 as “the earliest” date the Bank could start building and testing a currency prototype. No decision on whether to go ahead with a CBDC is expected until then. The Bank has previously said that the earliest date for launch of a UK CBDC was “the second half of the decade”.

Other countries are already trialling national digital currencies, with China an early trailblazer. Trials of the digital renminbi first began in 2021.

Will it transpire that the British public - the real one, ethnically - will stand and fight government for its money and economic freedom, and for its ancient civil rights in a way it has signally failed to do for its own life and land?  Could be.