No, the WEF did not say that ‘CBDC chips must be implanted under your skin’

Context

Viral posts on social media claim that the World Economic Forum (WEF) has declared that Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) will soon be required to be implanted under the skin for societal participation, including buying necessities like food and water. The claim comes from an article by The People's Voice, formerly known as NewsPunch, a website notorious for spreading misinformation, published on July 10, 2023. 

The claim has been amplified by social media users across multiple platforms, expressing concerns about the implications and relating it to conspiracy theories such as the mark of the beast, a conspiracy theory that arose linking the widespread use of barcodes with satanism.

However, this claim is unfounded and lacks credibility.

In Fact

In August 2022, the WEF explained that CBDCs are a kind of electronic money, digital counterparts of a nation's physical currency, and that the issuance and management of these CBDCs fall under the jurisdiction of national financial authorities. 

We found no evidence that the WEF has issued any official statement endorsing or proposing the implantation of CBDC chips under the skin for societal participation. Moreover, the WEF, as a non-governmental and lobbying organization, has no authority or power to implement such measures globally.

The claim that the WEF advocated for CBDC chip implants originates from the website The People's Voice, which is known for spreading misinformation. Formerly called NewsPunch and YourNewsWire, it has a history of publishing fabricated and fake stories. Logically Facts has previously debunked numerous articles published by this source. 

The People's Voice article claims that the WEF has “declared that all citizens must be implanted with a CBDC microchip in the very near future, to be able to fully participate in society and do basic things such as purchase food and water.” After this, there is no mention of the WEF in the rest of the article, which features excerpts from an interview uploaded on YouTube on July 7, 2023. The interview featured Ivor Cummins, a commentator, and Richard Werner, a German banking and development economist. Though Werner was honored as a "Global Leader for Tomorrow" by the WEF at Davos in 2003, he is no longer officially affiliated with the organization as of July 2023. In the video, Werner states that a “central banker” revealed to him that CBDC chips resemble a small grain of rice, that could potentially be implanted under people’s skin. He strongly opposed this idea, considering it a violation of human dignity.

In the interview, Werner made no direct reference to the WEF. Moreover, it is crucial to emphasize that his statements do not represent any official WEF position or other global banking authority. The WEF is frequently and falsely associated with unsupported conspiracy theories on social media, which misrepresent the WEF's actual positions and objectives

The Verdict

The World Economic Forum has not advocated for CBDC chip implants. Richard Werner, a German economist not employed or affiliated with WEF, discussed the potential future use of such implants in an unrelated interview, and his comments have been falsely peddled as WEF's stance. Therefore, we have marked the claim as false.