In 2023, a most interesting divergence was revealed as European central banks publicly grappled with crucial Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC9 choices: retail versus wholesale. While these options may seem fairly benign to the average citizen, the European Central Bank (ECB), along with the Bank of England (BoE) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB), announced critical and revealing design preferences. The choice between retail and wholesale CBDCs echoes vastly different worldviews on societal governance and value systems. The BoE and SNB lean towards a synthetic model, blending innovation with…