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PIERRE, South Dakota (LifeSiteNews) — South Dakota governor Kristi Noem vetoed a bill Thursday that classifies a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC) as money, while excluding private cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Noem called the bill a “threat to our freedom” in an interview with Tucker Carlson on Friday, and warned that 20 other states have drawn up the same kind of legislation.

“By defining ‘money’ in this proposed way, HB 1193 opens the door to the risk that the federal government could more easily adopt a CBDC which then may become the only viable digital currency,” Noem explained in her veto letter.

By giving the government control over currency, the bill would enable them to “control people,” she warned on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

If the government doesn’t approve of what you’re purchasing, if they have the only form of digital currency out there that is endorsed and utilized in the country, they can control how you spend that money and thus take away all your freedom,” said Noem.

The bill, which is “sold as an update to the guidelines of the Universal Commercial Code, backed by all of our financial institutions,” according to Noem, defines money as a “medium of exchange that is currently authorized or adopted by a domestic or foreign government.”

She added in her veto letter that since the bill also “expressly exclud[es]” decentralized digital assets — known as cryptocurrencies — as money, it would make them more difficult to use, and “put South Dakota citizens at a business disadvantage.”

Noem is urging South Dakota lawmakers to reverse their decision and help her “kill this bill once and for all,” since they had passed it by margins that would allow them to overturn Noem’s veto: 49-17 in the House of Representatives and 24-9 in the Senate.

Critics have increasingly warned in recent years that CBDCs enable full-blown tyranny by allowing the government to restrict or even freeze a citizen’s purchasing power, thereby coercing its constituents into submitting to its decrees.

Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis openly warned of the dangers of CBDCs in August, highlighting the fact that direct control and taxation of bank accounts are what set CBDCs apart from other digital transaction platforms like Venmo. 

“…I can see why China would do it. If they want to monitor every one of your transactions, you could do that with a central bank digital currency. You can’t do that with Venmo. If you want to impose negative interest rates, you can do that with a central bank digital currency. You can’t do that with Venmo,” said Kashkari.

CBDCs are not a pure hypothetical, but are being actively pursued in many countries around the world, including the U.S., which is currently researching how to implement a national CBDC. The Biden administration declared research into CBDC deployment to be of the “highest urgency” in a March 9 executive order.

Investment guru Robert Kiyosaki, author of “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” condemned the CBDC May 9 executive order as “the most treasonous act in U.S. history” and “communism in its purest form,” for enabling totalitarian control.

Financial advisor Joe Brown has warned that a U.S. CBDC can be deployed earlier than the government is suggesting, since the infrastructure for a U.S. CBDC is being quietly developed through a FedNow digital instant payments service, which the Federal Reserve announced would begin “full-scale pilot testing” in mid-2023.

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