This interview is somewhat related to your comment.

He also predicts that some major event in the future, perhaps a large hack, perhaps a red flag event, perhaps not, could give western govts. the excuse to require everyone to prove their identity online, and this is in preparation for a move to digital currency.

That's already happening in Australia - it's being sold as anti-trolling laws.

Aus Gpovt website: The Bill is also an important part of the government's commitment to protecting Australians from online harms. It will empower Australians to 'unmask' the originators of anonymous defamatory posts made on social media, where the material is posted in Australia. In doing so, the Bill will seek to centre defamation disputes on the relationship between the victim and the author of the defamatory post.

That's gonna be great for the corrupt elites with their lawyers on tap. Any regular person (with no lawyer access) who dares to call them corrupt risks being crushed by a legal industry designed to protect those who are rich enough to pay for it.

A digital currency is the end of any anonymity in one's commercial life. I know a little, well a lot more than most people actually, about how these currencies work. China has already issued theirs. As a Bitcoin or Ethereum, they're fine, but in the hands of a govt., centralized, they're bad news.>

Yep, that's one of the big ones in a centralized data-scrape - bio-metrics, financials, location tracking - is there anything else they need?