ECB plans for a digital euro

Duke of Marmalade said:
One of the disappointments as far as I am concerned is this commitment to privacy
Click to expand...
My reading of this thread + some googling is that there's no firm/precise committment to privacy (not counting vague statements).

@Brendan Burgess did mention "There will be no record of the transaction.", however, I don't see how that could possibly work, as there needs to be a record in order to prevent double-spending. Even Bitcoin has a ledger where all transactions are recorded.

Bitcoin gains its privacy from the fact that you don't have to show any documents in order to get an account. There's no sign that the situation will be similar for a digtial euro.

If you have evidence to the contrary then please do let me know. Otherwise I don't believe there's any need for you to be disappointed.
 
Even physical cash is not completely private; banknotes have unique serial numbers and in the context of particular operations the authorities do sometimes record the serial numbers of particular notes and use possession/handing of those notes to prove complicity in crime.

I agree that digital euros will be much less private than physical euros. Even if the authorities do give a robust assurance of privacy there will always remain some degree of doubt or scepticism as to how much reliance you can really place on that assurance — i.e. people may perceive digital euros to be less private than they actually are. And it's the perception of privacy that will influence people's attitude to/takeup of digital euros, rather than the actuality.

Having said that, concerns about privacy may not be that big a factor in the takeup of digital euros. It's already the case that, in the US, just 5% of point-of-sale consumer transactions are settled in cash; in the Asia-Pacific region, 15%; in Europe, 22%. And that's just point-of-sale consumer transactions; I haven't found figures for cash transactions as a percentage of total household spending, but my guess is that it will be well under 1% in the US; not much higher in Europe.

Clearly, most people aren't overly concerned with the privacy of their spending. Even people who are will tend to reserve that concern for particular transactions, for which physical cash will still be available. They won't necessarily refuse to use digital euros for the rest of their spending.
 
Last edited:
One of the points stressed at the meeting was that it would be optional - no one will be forced to use a Digital Euro.

Personally, I have no fears about privacy. I am not involved in crime so no one will be too interested in where I spend cash. My larger expenditures are all documented on my AIB bank statement anyway.

But if I do make a career change into crime, I will probably be more interested in dealing in cash.
 
Dominic Ó Galla said:
@Brendan Burgess did mention "There will be no record of the transaction.", however, I don't see how that could possibly work, as there needs to be a record in order to prevent double-spending. Even Bitcoin has a ledger where all transactions are recorded
Click to expand...
I don’t think double spending can arise with a central currency. When you flash your AIB debit card at the till AFAIK AIB instantly reduce your account balance and you can’t spend that money again. With a decentralised currency on an open source platform there needs time for everyone to agree that you owned the coin. An essential feature of Bitcoin is that when after say 10 minutes the miners have agreed you owned the coin your transfer to a new owner is recorded on the ledger and ithe coin remains traceable back to its creation.
 
Fortune said:
I've never understood the privacy argument against spending on cards. They may know how much you've spent in Dunnes, Boots and Amazon but they've no idea what you've bought.
Click to expand...
Dunnes, Boots and Amazon know, though. (As an aside, that's the main reason that retailers run loyalty programmes — so they can harvest that information and monetize it in various ways.)
 
I learned yesterday that CBDC have already been launched in other places:


Countries with Launched (Live) CBDCs

- Bahamas : Sand Dollar, launched October 2020

- Nigeria : e‑Naira, launched October 25, 2021

- Jamaica : Jam‑Dex, launched July 2022

- Eastern Caribbean Currency Union – DCash, rolled out 2021–2022 across islands like Antigua & Barbuda, Grenada, St. Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, Anguilla, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines



That makes four launched systems, counting the ECCU as one currency union.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top