Forget CBDCs: 5 Things you Need to Know about the New Financial System
Forget CBDCs: 5 Things you Need to Know about the New Financial System
Miles Harris: 9-16-2026
Forget CBDCs. The financial system is changing in much bigger ways. In this video I explain five changes that matter most, including tokenised money, digital ownership, collateral, financial permissions and why more of your balance sheet may become visible to the financial system.
The key question is no longer just what you own, but what you can access, move, pledge and control.
The global financial architecture is undergoing its most profound transformation since the abandonment of the gold standard.
While public discourse frequently focuses on the rise of Central Bank Digital Currencies, or CBDCs, the actual shift underway is far more expansive, systemic, and sophisticated.
We are moving rapidly toward a highly integrated financial ecosystem defined by digital currencies, tokenized assets, and programmable money operating under centralized, permissioned networks. This structural evolution promises to redefine how wealth is measured, how credit is distributed, and how individuals interact with the global economy.
To truly understand this transition, it is necessary to look past the sensationalized headlines and examine the underlying mechanics of modern monetary design.
The classical definition of money is expanding to include a wide array of tokenized assets and liabilities. This digitization process allows physical property, corporate equity, government debt, and traditional bank deposits to exist as digital tokens on shared ledgers.
Consequently, the emerging financial architecture enables real-time tracking, instant settlement, and direct programmability of assets at a global scale, fundamentally altering the speed and control mechanisms of global capital.
While the trajectory toward a digital asset economy is clear, the pace of adoption remains highly uneven across different jurisdictions. The Eurozone has emerged as a frontrunner in exploring and developing retail and wholesale CBDC frameworks. Conversely, regulatory bodies and policymakers in the United States and the United Kingdom have shown more reluctance, balancing technological innovation with concerns over privacy, systemic stability, and existing commercial banking models.
However, this regional divergence has not halted progress. Instead, it has accelerated coordinated private and public sector projects focused on tokenized bank deposits and interoperable digital assets, allowing commercial institutions to upgrade their transactional infrastructure behind the scenes.
This systemic transformation is also shifting how economists and market participants evaluate financial health. Historically, traditional money supply metrics, such as M1 and M2, served as the primary indicators of economic liquidity. In the coming digital paradigm, these metrics are losing their predictive dominance.
They are being superseded by the liquidity and borrowing capacity of digitally represented assets. When real estate, securities, and supply chains are fully tokenized, they can be instantly pledged as collateral, effectively unlocking vast amounts of previously dormant capital. This shift dramatically increases the velocity of credit and alters how lending markets operate.
The engine driving this new financial paradigm is the utilization of permissioned environments. Unlike public, decentralized blockchains, permissioned ledgers are managed by trusted, regulated entities. This structure provides institutional operators with enhanced capabilities for oversight, compliance, and risk management.
While these environments introduce unprecedented levels of structural control and transparency for regulators, they also unlock highly sophisticated credit, lending, and smart-contract structures. Transactions can be automated to execute only when specific, pre-programmed conditions are met, reducing counterparty risk and administrative friction.
As the global financial system transitions to this highly automated and programmable state, individuals must adapt their personal financial strategies. Maintaining financial optionality and resilience requires a proactive approach to managing personal balance sheets. Relying solely on traditional cash reserves may no longer be sufficient in an economy where asset liquidity and digital collateralization dictate borrowing power.
0:00 Introduction
0:32 Your Money Is Becoming Easier to Track and Control
2:16 Money Is Splitting Into Different Digital Forms
3:43 Your Balance Sheet Is Becoming Part of the System
5:19 Liquidity Will Depend More on Acceptable Collateral
6:25 Ownership Is Becoming More Permissioned
7:08 What This Means for Households