Central banks should issue digital currencies to replace physical cash within the next decade.

This debate examined whether Central Bank Digital Currencies represent a strategic necessity or a perilous overreach into cashless monetary systems. Over four rounds, the competition remained tight initially but revealed a decisive asymmetry in argumentative depth and evidentiary rigor as the debate progressed.

Round 1 established a roughly equal footing, with both sides presenting coherent frameworks. Pro articulated a vision of monetary modernization emphasizing inclusion and sovereignty (6.3), while Con offered a cautious counter-narrative prioritizing privacy and stability (6.4). However, the divergence began in Round 2, where Con successfully identified critical vulnerabilities in Pro's reliance on "design-dependent" solutions—arguments that asserted risks could be engineered away without sufficient empirical precedent. Pro's score stagnated at 6.3 while Con advanced to 6.8, indicating Con's superior ability to probe the evidentiary gap between theoretical architecture and implementation reality.

The turning point occurred in Round 3. Con effectively dismantled Pro's recurring assurance that CBDC risks were merely "solvable engineering challenges," demonstrating that financial stability concerns (bank disintermediation) and surveillance risks involve structural economic and political trade-offs that cannot be purely technologized away. Pro failed to substantively advance beyond their opening framework, remaining flat at 6.3, while Con escalated to 7.2 by weaponizing Pro's own sources against them and exposing circular reasoning.

Round 4 sealed the outcome. Pro's closing argument (6.0) suffered from rhetorical repetition and a failure to address Con's accumulated pressure regarding unresolved tensions in central bank research. Conversely, Con's closing (8.2) demonstrated sophisticated synthesis, showing that Pro's burden of proof—demonstrating that hypothetical benefits outweigh documented systemic risks—remained unmet. The decisive factor was Con's superior handling of the burden of proof: Pro consistently deferred to future-tense possibilities ("can be designed"), while Con anchored arguments in present-tense institutional constraints and documented financial stability literature.