Bitcoin Forum

I have read about the digital euro talks here (https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2021/html/ecb.sp210414_1~e76b855b5c.en.html) and I think it is worth sharing with the forum what is the current thinking or the European Institutions:

Citizen´s consultation yield concerns about:

- Privacy - 43% of people are worried about this!!
- Usefulness and safety
- Integration in the current systems
- Efficient and cost-less

While the ECB acknowledges the need for privacy, they also say:


So, yes, privacy is going to be a concern, yes the institutions will not make digital euro anonymous per-se so I my view we should expect it to be very unlike cash and yes it does open the door to making cash restricted for very small payments and thus having a massive control over people.

My self-question is, up to what point a successful launch of a digital Euro, versus a Digital Yuan and a Digital USD may increase the attractive of these currencies and thus could impact the exchange rate beyond the usual interest rates / inflation / import-export components of the demand for currencies.

If the government continues to implement digital currency that has a way of tracking your movement, I am pretty sure that there isn't going to be a lot of people that are going to like it. Also, privacy is a commodity in this world full of technology that tracks you. Remove the ability to trace the movement of the people and make it favor the people.

It is not clear to me. Yes, in theory they say they are concerned about privacy:


I actually think, as I think you point out as well, that privacy, if any, is going to be in short supply. What are they going to offer privacy for if a digital Euro is every controller's dream?

In any case, there will always be ways to escape. The ECB will know everything that anyone using the digital euro does but for illicit activities (or pure privacy of licit activities) other fiat currencies, gold and silver coins or cryptos will be used as in Sweden, where cash has practically disappeared.

Regarding the last question, it is not clear to me. I think that both the Yuan, the Dollar and the digital Euro are going to be launched at about the same time, although it seems that the Yuan will be the first, and, when it does, the US and Europe will not want to be left behind, so I don't think it will affect the exchange rate significantly.

Personally, I think the reservation of funds should be made equally 1:1 for unpredictable problems with network and hacker attacks, but the difficulty of creating such system is really complicated including that it should be made for whole European union. Indeed it's so possible in current realities and in other hand really difficult to make it work ideally and securly working for whole union, will be great if they will make it decetralized as DEX exchanges, without a central control but it's impossible

If they don't make their digital currencies anonymous I fail to see how people are going to like it. Maybe I am just too old but it doesn't seem like such a good deal. Traditional fiat currency can already be transfered within seconds,on top of that we can use payment services like PayPal to shop online. And für investing I would assume that investors are still going to prefer independent crypto currencies that are not controlled by central banks. To me it doesn't really matter if its the yuan euro or dollar. Bitcoin and ETH are going to be the future.

I do not think that people have to even be worried about the launch of digital fiats from around the would. Well at the end of the day, these things are not going to be anonymous and at the same time they are going to be stable, backed and slight fluctuations would be just comparable to the one's of a stock market. Why would people even consider holding them in the first place ? I do think that the governmental bodies will provide people with some benefits, like discounts etc.. which I do think is nothing but Manipulation to get their market started. At the same time they will try and ban cryptocurrencies to get the crowd more attracted towards their fiat 2.0. honestly I do think I would use them for trading in the worst case scenario if that would be an option. But much like stable coins they would not be that relevant at the end of the day.

When central bank coins will be out the main FUD central banks will have toward Bitcoin will be lack of privacy. People will get very sceptical of using Bitcoin and give their information's for everyone to see compared to have same privacy as they have right now with central bank coins.

I'm not really sold on the idea of why a digital EURO (crypto) would be better than the actual virtual currency (numbers in a bank account) and cash system.
Bank accounts, cards and internet banking makes our method of payment easy and effortless while cash payments offer us a certain degree of anonimity.

In order to analyse this properly we must ask ourselves what would be the benefits of using the blockchain technology instead of the current bank system:
- Cost effectiveness - probably more for banks and not for end-users - but could translate in certain discounts for clients as well
- Transparency on government transactions - this could finally be a solution to the corruption present especially in today's political systems\
- Smart contract functionalities - I don't know about you, but taking a loan using a smart contract sounds enticing to me. :D

I cannot think of anything else right now, but I'm sure there should be more benefits. However it shouldn't affect our lives too much even if the EU makes the transition to a cryptographically generated currency.

There's definitely more privacy with BTC than there'll be with CBDCs. What these guys'll do is they'll make it so that you'll probably have some kind of imaginary privacy, something similar to the COVID-tracing apps. You theoretically have privacy since the data is exchanged randomly, yet it's not that hard to link a device to their owner or two devices to each of their owners.

We are pseudonymous. CBDCs will be fully open to the authorities, something very similar to the banking system we have today. What I'm more worried about is that Bitcoin doesn't have any privacy besides coin control, mixers and CoinJoins, out of which the first is a quite difficult task if you want some persistent privacy while the other two are seen as coin-stainers. If that many people want privacy for a digital coin, then I'm afraid neither BTC or CBDCs are the proper answer.

What privacy can there be for a centralized government controlled coin? Regardless, of course, of what that government tells its citizens. IMHO people who expect any privacy in this are straight out delusional.

The problem really here is most of the people who are concerned about the privacy part of currencies is that they aren't really private at all even the ones who are already being used by them. From Paypal, bank wire transactions, and even down to remittance centers all of them are under FATF and AML rules and a lot of people who are concerned about privacy are using it already. They undergo some kind of KYC and verification process and maybe they aren't aware that their transactions are being monitored. The general rule is if there is a monetary transaction involve it will most likely be monitored by the authorities.

One issue with the euro is the EU's inability to effectively restructure and reformat the economy of greece to prevent it from being a debt liability to positive cash flow EU states. Greece's troubled economy is constantly being bailed out by the EU. Over the long term the arrangement could threaten to drag other EU states into unsustainability along with greece. #Brexit and the UK abandoning the EU further stressed this condition.

One of the more interesting ideas for CBDCs was venezuela's proposal to back their CBDC with oil. Central banks could initially back their digital currencies with oil, gold or other commodities. That could attract the type of mass adoption they're looking for. Based on what we've seen from china's initial CBDC proposals. Which included digital currencies with expiration dates and otherwise inferior strings attached in contrast to cash or competing technologies. It doesn't appear that the talent designing and developing the 1st draft of CBDC have much background in marketing.

Those 43% people use fiat currency. They do know that the fiat currency they are using isn't private at all, right? The other form of "digital fiat" such as digital wallets they use aren't giving them any privacy at all. Then what's the difference between using those and digital EURO? No difference at all. They are all the same. Centralized and controlled by a single entity. I doubt  they would be willing to make a currency that will give full privacy to their people/users. If they do that, they won't be able to control them.

We had digital Euro, USD and other currencies for decades. If you're using credit card, that's digital fiat currency. The only difference between these new projects and old systems is that now the government will be the owner of the network, so they won't have to request information from private companies. And if these digital currencies will be a public good, their fees might be lower than in privately owned payment systems.

Exactly!
I was supposed to say the same thing that we had been using digital fiat for a while now or through ages and it is just they are just trying to make it sound something new but its not really
that giving much of that difference. For fees and security then there's no doubt with that but with privacy? and this is where everything do changes for those people who do
value up their privacy then this isnt something new for them to care on and just simply stick into real crypto with having that anonymity feature.
Yes, it might not be regulated or mainly supported but nothings beats out the chance that you do have the full control of your finances.

Think of the panic among current cash holders.

What If I had 100 thousand in cash at home right now and heard in the news that next year I won't be able to buy a car anymore. All I'll be able to do is grocery shopping or paying in restaurants. Crazy!

Now due to low interest rates people are withdrawing cash and they want to stop it by making cash useless, that's their main goal.

that's what happens to real currencies nowadays, inflation is always there, but I think if only one year the inflation is not too high. it is not good to save especially in a bank, of course the money we save will not develop. indeed crypto currently offers for transaction and investment tools

if anyone done some research about things many years ago where governments went into research on crypto.(hyperledger project)
its not a single blockchain. but if i ELI-5 it.. a master chain(reserve) with lots of sidechains
heck even bitcoin is shifting to this business model with LN and liquid banknotes bitcoin as the reserve asset

i can imagine it more like each euro country having its own sidechain. and each day it just aggregates the daily total coin movements with the reserve chain

this does not mean every country holds every piece of transaction data. nor all life history of balance holder.

...
it could go as far as every town has its own 'branch' of the bank.

..
one thing is for sure. they will end up having some way to 'freeze' accounts or gain access to funds in case of courtfines. taxes or illegal activity seize and comply stuff
so ELI- 5 that as multisig involvement

The creation of a state digital currency goes against the main goal of cryptocurrencies - decentralization and freedom from banks and the old system. In fact, the digital state currency will also be controlled by the state. Perhaps there will be one plus - ease of use.

The "digital euro" won't boost the value of the euro.The "digital euro" is not an attractive currency,because it will be more transparent and you will have less privacy,while using such currency.
All the central bank digital currencies are created for the same purpose-fighting illicit financial activities.
They won't improve the life of the average consumer.
I'm not sure who the digital euro will look like,but I'm sure that nothing significant will change in the way we use digital fiat money(credit cards,mobile payments,etc.)

The Euro and the Dollar are already digital. They sit mostly in your bank accounts. They don't need a blockchain to do that. What they really want is removing the physical bills completely and I don't think that's a good idea.

Im not sure that it will be more private than standart EURO. Its not profitable for govs to implement privacy coins as primary payment method

I don't think such digital euros are even necessary, they can create a coin and give them the name of Euro but if it doesn't provide us with privileges of anonymity and freedom, I doubt anyone would use it. They have to combat crimes, not we, it's their burden, because of exceptions, they can't make rules for everyone and make it norm!

I think it's hard to fully implement digital EURO, government would rather control the circulation of money and the transparency that they needed in order to provide trust to their people. I think it's alternative EURO, a digital that make the people transact easily but need to control by the government. One thing that people's concern is that it can use illegally. It's good to know that there are a lot of countries making their own digital money. There is a city here in my country that planning to launch their stable coin it's called C-PESO.

A stable coin pegged to EURO, provided by an entity much more trusted than Tether can ever be, accepted and probably advertised by most shops.. I doubt that there will be many who will not use it in some years.
It has a good chance to become something more widely used, accepted and probably cheaper(!) than Visa or MasterCard, which are also far from anonymous.

Will there be a voting intended for the people before they make the such changes? I don't think so. Even if they don't like the idea.
If someone serves the bill and they pass it then the people won't even have any choice but to follow it.
As I read thru the article 8000 participants do have good recommendation but it's all just for the ease of people. How about the ease for the government?

This might be difficult to implement and may give birth to new problems especially in the rural regions who are inclined to use fiat.
Perhaps they'll just go back into bartering their goods.  :D

The cryptocurrency of EURO will be issued by the central bank of EURO. It may still be blockchain-based, but in a centralized chain and banks can control transactions at their discretion. And of course, their source code will be confidential.
I don't think the government's cryptocurrency will be as decentralized and transparent as the current projects on the market.

digital fiats issued by the governments and banks aren't something that concerns us because they aren't even creating them for the people. usually these things are created for some geopolitical power struggles. for example China is trying to make its own digital Yuan so that it can take over the world in currency too while kicking US dollar out by replacing it for good in the long term.

The difficulty level of attaining this is quite huge and I personally do not think that any government would allow let alone create something like this had there been no back plans in ridding people off of privacy that they very much want. This is probably just a tactic in making something similar to cryptocurrencies to fool people into switching so that the government along with the banks can gain or have even more control over funds of every citizen.

Lol I don’t think there are that many people who are ready to adopt this digital currencies that the government are planning to develop. And moreover there are still many people who likes making use of cash, I always have a need for both cash and electronic payment methods. So that’s why I don’t see them both as a competition, because I always see the need for making use of the both of them.

Instead of looking for digital currencies to create , I believe there are other pressing needs that the government should be giving their attention to and not to creating digital and cryptocurrencies. When they have fixed things that are more important we can then talk about these ones.

LOL what?   Bitcoin have public ledger. Anyone. Totally anyone can look at all your trades.  Not a police or judge or but every single criminal in the world.  CBDCs will have opaque ledger and only central authority will be able to check transaction. Those that those authorities will sell your info and those that will hack them and steal this info.

Address that you have in your profile shows 72 transactions. I saw this just by using blockchain explorer. No fancy chainanalysis tool that are being build right now to serve everyone. Blochain analysis will soon be multi billion industry  that will employ brightest minds in crypto.

The difference is that for Bitcoin there can pretty easily be made so there's no correlation between your actual name/person and (some of) your wallets.
On the other hand, although you will not know how much digital EURO I own, the government will surely know.
I'll say that neither is optimal, but at least for Bitcoin you always have the choice of a mixer  ;)

Like Chipmixer! nice one NeuroticFish.

Anything government issued will enable them to track the movement of that thing
be it electronic FIAT transactions or digital FIAT transactions. Bitcoin is more difficult and there are options open to us to
disguise our transactions.

Digital Euro being controlled by the governments will also be able to restrict the use
of it, the same as they do with FIAT. Block cards, close buildings and shut down ATM's.

Bitcoin is not issued by any government (so they say at least) and yet they still track it. Like I said above, the dollar and the euro are already digital. If they are not going to make it decentralized which they won't as you guessed, why bother? They bother because they don't want the physical notes.

It's more than that.
Unlike the data from private companies VISA or MasterCard, or payment processors, which they have to ask and may not come so easy, unlike private banks where locking your money may take a while (papers getting sent, approved, operations done only in banking days), their own electronic money solves all this: full control over all the information and tracking, full control for locking or confiscating the coins they want whenever they want.
Shortly: full surveillance and control, that's why they bother. And I expect to be cheaper to be used than credit cards, hence shops may even advertise/prefer this kind of payment.
And yes, I also expect it will allow reversal or payments; being centralized it may not even need a blockchain.

This is much easier to say then to do. When i buy a TV seller know my address where o sell it. When I buy a car seller know who  I am since he make a contract and give me keys. There are some things you can trade anonymously but most you cant.

Government is last I am worried to know my personal information. They know it right now already and I have no problem with that as long as they keep them safe. I am afraid that corporations or bad guys get a hold of those information about me.

This has Dusk Network written all over it. Confidential permissionless transactions, privacy smart contract, 2 different transaction models and regulatory compliance. I am hoping that they will get a change to prove themselves after mainnet.

Days of the physical cash is numbered but let's hope that the system replacin it isn't going to be huge surveillance program

Most people have nothing to hide, so, I suppose, tracking won't be a major constraining factor here. At the same time, most of people worry about the current fees on money transfer and the convenience of this process. If the developers manage to make this digital EURO transfer more advantageous, faster, cheaper - I bet people will follow this idea regardless of privacy issues.

Although I do not live in the European Union, it is my positive vision that a public consultation has been made to its citizens on how the digital euro would function for their needs.
Without a doubt, in all parts of the world central banks have realized that they need a transformation to digital alternatives.
The result of the survey glimpses innovation.

With the confidence,I will say EU doesn't made a Digital assest on EURO.Since you are from the EU nation,you may aware about the economy their.They made economy to balance all the nation in EU.So how they accepted a digital currency and make them with different demand on different nation.And they won't allow the less stable coin.

It will probably use some sort of so-called DLT (Distributed Lddger Technology) which, of course, does not mean anything!
What I am a bit sad about is that bitcoin was a wake-up call for the financial world which is now finding some very bad ways of improving cash and whatever is related to payments.
I hope the old nice cash coins and notes will survive but I know that in 10-15 years my kids will ask me what those things were because they would not know.

And why would anybody agree to use this surveillance systems? The only viable answer is, they are going to eliminate all the other competitors ,and that includes bitcoin as well, so you won't have any other choice. And if they will be their own payment gates and render VISA/MC obsolete I guess that's very bad news for their shareholders.

As far as I know, they can already confiscate the dollars whenever they want if they are sitting in a bank account but again, the big problem is the physical notes.

I see it as a futile attempt to make people spend their currencies on the stupid shit because that stupid shit (like phones, TV's, luxury cars, newer GPU's) create jobs and the more people get employed the more successful the government looks and the more successful the government looks, the more votes they get in the next election.

I guess they may even block your commodity purchases with this new system because buying commodities would fuck them up.

So they will make a new chain... with full control over that chain?! Some board of directors, or politicians, will have the power to do with that chain as they like? Like to issue more coins when they like, they will burn some coins, or sell where they wish?!
Isn't all that what we have now?! Of course, as others say, controlling digital will be much easier than controlling cash! So new digital fiat will be fiat, with more powers...

Well, what else to say here than to state the obvious... centralized is centralized in any form! With a digital system, centralized organizations will have more control than they have now... on the other side decentralization is something else! And we will see what will people choose... in the end choice is on us! All of us!