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Topic: ECB starts 24 month digital euro project. (Read 522 times)

legendary
Activity: 2912
Merit: 6403
Blackjack.fun
July 29, 2021, 08:30:24 AM
#64
I do not think that is a new currency at all. It would be the equivalent to say that the Euros deposited at a bank are different from the Euros that have in your wallet. In fact these euros are more different than the ones that would be emitted as electronic since the banks are entitled to print their own money by lending more than they have in deposits. The Euro will be the Euro even if it is stored in a different way, there is no need to submit that to the 19 on those grounds. The initiative may however require a certain level of acquiescence from all the countries involved, but IMO not any constitutional changes.

Not that simple!
There is a problem with issuing euros, the ECB does not issue coins, those are done by the CB, the roles are clearly defined so unless they will only print clear denominations of CBDC that match the current values they will not be able to do it lawfully. So,
- the ECB has no current legal way of doing so, it needs a status update in order to issue currency on their own
- national banks don't have this power either, and on top of that in some of the countries, it's clearly said that they can only issue a well-defined currency and in the case of the eurozone every currency that would be issued by the CB would become legal tender and everyone in the country would be forced to accept it for payment. Not going to happen! Take a look at Germany, they simply can't stop using cash, how are you going to make them use a digital currency when they didn't want to use a debit card?

It's not as simple as you think, this Union has a lot of treaties that hold it together, and because each joining country has ratified these if one of those is broken a lot more become invalid also. Given the current mess and constant infighting updating everything will not be done without a vote, nobody is going to risk another fragmentation on this.

Quote
If, however, it were necessary to amend the treaties, in principle this would have to be done through a new treaty, with the attendant difficulties linked to the need for unanimity and ratification processes in the Member States. Exceptionally, under a derogation in Article 129(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), the Statute of the ESCB and of the ECB can be amended using the legislative procedure. However, the derogation is restricted to a limited number of Statute articles, including Article 17 on opening accounts, and authorises only marginal amendments to the content of the articles. Making wholesale changes to the content of one of the articles covered by the derogation might, in particular, be viewed as circumventing the restrictive nature of this procedure.

and the legal tender part:

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As the law stands, only banknotes issued by the Eurosystem (TFEU Article 128) and coins (Article 11 of Council Regulation EC/974/98) are legal tender in the euro area. Assuming that it was possible, given the constraints detailed above, to introduce a retail CBDC that was equivalent to a digital form of banknotes, under TFEU Article 128, it would automatically benefit from legal tender status.

member
Activity: 1120
Merit: 68
Why they need 24 months for digital euro? Is it so hard to create gov level blockchain?
If you can do it less than a month then do it, there's probably a lot of factors involved in doing this project like scaling, network and integration. I don't think that the project can be any more shorter because they have to be released perfect or at least performing. I don't necessarily agree with them creating their own digital currency because I feel like once it's operational, they will start attacking the decentralized platform like what China did these past few months.
jr. member
Activity: 31
Merit: 26
Quote
Such a scenario would make it harder for the central bank to control monetary policy, maintain financial stability, ensure low cost payments and enable financial inclusion.
"Financial inclusion"? Please. Bitcoin is the essence of financial inclusion. Don't have good ID? Turned down for a bank account. Don't have a fixed address? Turned down for a bank account. Bad financial history? Turned down for a bank account. None of that matters with bitcoin. Install a wallet, done. No fiat or CBDC will ever be as financially inclusive as bitcoin is. And "control monetary policy" is a nice way of saying "print more money". We've all seen the chart showing USD losing >95% of its value in the last 100 years. Now here's the one for EUR - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1055948/value-euro-since-2000/. A cool 30% lost since its creation ~20 years ago. As the article points out, they are worried that the majority of the population will move to using bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, which directly impacts on their ability to bail out themselves and their friends and prop up their rigged markets indefinitely.

This has nothing to do with maintaining "financial stability", and everything to protecting their own vested interests.

I feel that what you are talking about is the nature of the problem. Bitcoin is not worried about competition. Now the European Union or China is actively developing digital currencies. Their goals or official ideas are also obvious. Of course, the reasons sound very good.

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The digital euro and digital renminbi(decp) are actually a natural world currency. It replaces the traditional currencies dominated by governments around the world and the actual circulation of physical gold. It also has the most powerful development space for currency payment functions. The function of the world currency is not affected by the fluctuation of any country’s paper currency, nor is it subject to the control of the dominant currency of any country’s government. It has a global circulation function, and it will play an irreplaceable role in the development of the world currency in the future.

What I want to ask is whether the land of fiat currencies among countries will compete with the land of digital currencies. Will there be a settlement system with a digital dollar as the core?

Regardless of development, as long as the digital currency issued by sovereign countries or regional organizations is centralized, or half of it is centralized, it has already broken away from the essence of the blockchain, and a perfect trust system cannot be established. This is the key, so it actually provides an accelerator for the development of Bitcoin.


legendary
Activity: 2366
Merit: 1624
Do not die for Putin
If and when the BoE launch a CBDC, will anyone outside of the UK even care?

If we exclude the British territories and countries that depend directly on British Aid, probably nobody will give a damn.
Maybe tourists?  Grin

Perhaps it's driven by the point stompix made above. If the Fed comes out with a proposal for a CBDC, then they have to take it to Congress and get it to pass a vote. If the ECB comes out with a proposal for a CBDC, then it has to be disseminated to 19 (or is it all 27?) member states, any one of which could veto it. They need to be sure they get it right or it'll never pass.

It's a CBDC tied to the euro, so it will be a question of the Eurozone 19, not of the whole EU, but the voting things still stand as I said before, any country could veto it at any time, plus I just read an article on how some countries have it in the law (or constitution) that the euro is the only legal currency, but the wording is so bad that it will need a re-write to accommodate a digital currency, Germany was given as an example but I really didn't get it, the quote was something like "euro banknotes are the only unrestricted legal means of payment" so assumingly this would need to be changed also in short, More headaches!

5 years is too long. they'd be taken over already by the adoption of stablecoins before they could test out to one city in their country. Chinese CBDC may have already spread out in a matter of months even in Africa.

I've read some news like that at the start of the year but it was just rumors and what-if questions, and then there was silence, anything new?

I do not think that is a new currency at all. It would be the equivalent to say that the Euros deposited at a bank are different from the Euros that have in your wallet. In fact these euros are more different than the ones that would be emitted as electronic since the banks are entitled to print their own money by lending more than they have in deposits. The Euro will be the Euro even if it is stored in a different way, there is no need to submit that to the 19 on those grounds. The initiative may however require a certain level of acquiescence from all the countries involved, but IMO not any constitutional changes.
legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 18711
What I do not understand however is that why people bother with it so much, are you hiding something?
Just because you have nothing to hide, doesn't mean you have anything you want to share. You don't need to be hiding something incriminating to want privacy; privacy is a fundamental human right. The loss of privacy leads to the loss of freedom. With zero privacy, would you behave the same way in public as you do around friends? What about when in your own house, alone? Would you feel comfortable publicly declaring every thought you think, regardless of how ashamed it makes you feel? Of course not. With zero privacy, you would quickly be reduced to the lowest common denominator, too afraid to say anything slightly out of the ordinary and too afraid to be your true self.

Everyone values privacy. Otherwise why do you have curtains on your windows? Why do you wear clothes? Why do you post on this forum from a pseudonym, rather than from your real name with your physical address in your profile?

I don't need to spend a lot of time dismantling the "nothing to hide" argument, because it is already widely discredited. I will share one of my favorite quotes on the topic though:
Quote from: Glenn Greenwald
The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: there’s no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide it’s in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. That’s accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, that’s what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched.
sr. member
Activity: 1694
Merit: 299
The idea is that everyone has to know each other's identity when sending a cryptocurrency. That means you would have to know my identity if you want to send me Bitcoin. This is complete nonsense.
I think the idea is that the government knows everybody's identity. You can still give me your wallet address and I can still send you some bitcoin without either of us knowing anything else about the other, but the government want to know who is sending and receiving those transactions, even if the people doing the transacting don't.
Yeah it's the government, not people. I understand that government needs to know who sends money to who, that "sort of" makes sense, obviously it is not good for privacy and some people are very much against it, but I at least can understand it a bit.

What I do not understand however is that why people bother with it so much, are you hiding something? My government knows exactly how much I own and how much I made and I paid taxes based on that, it is not even about them sending me any information, I did it all with my accountant, I do it every month.

This includes every single thing I spend as well, since I am a freelancer I have the luxury to even claim food as expense since my home is my office so I eat at my office while eating at home, so they know basically EVERYTHING, like literally to the garbage bag level, to what I eat every day level. I do not mind, since.. like why would I care if they know it? Why would it matter if government knows I ate a bagel this morning?
legendary
Activity: 2898
Merit: 1823
Their plans to create a CBDC have been around for a long time, even my developing country is already preparing for the realization of the CBDC, I read on the official Instagram of my country's central bank that they are in the research stage and it will take quite a long time.  Implicitly they did create CBDC as a form of their awareness of the development of BTC so that this will be a comparison asset for BTC that already existed before.


But if the Central Banks believe that a CBDC will stop/discourage people from buying, and using Bitcoin, then they cannot be more WRONG. I believe people HODL, and use Bitcoin because of two things, idealism, and greed. Bitcoin is censorship-resistant, and something that can still surge 10x more. CBDC can’t give you that.

Well EU plans to start blocking anonymous wallet transaction which they could literally make it a hunt for criminals not just for launderer that they usually say.


They can, but how are they going to censor a transaction from happening? Plus I believe is many users would then avoid  to use services that require KYC to de-anonymize my transactions.

Quote

And then this CBDC although it will take a long time before they could come up perfectly, stablecoins might also be screened or banned because they think that stablecoins are going to be widely used than the CBDC.


The government will do everything to ban anything that threatens their authority, but the cat is out of the bag. Like the genie, the idea of Bitcoin can’t be pushed back into the bottle. It’s like the discovery of Electricity, that’s how ground-breaking Satoshi’s white paper is.

legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 18711
that nobody can buy any other crypto unless he buys the CDBC and other cryptos can be brought only through CDBC, this would make user identification from them pretty easier.
People either already buy from a centralized exchange after completing full KYC, in which case the government knows everything you do, or they buy peer to peer without completing KYC, in which case the government doesn't know what you are doing. That won't necessarily change with a CBDC. Those who use centralized exchanges will still have zero privacy, and those who trade peer to peer can still hide the fact they are buying and selling bitcoin from the government. The government will be able to more closely track the movement of fiat between individuals, but they will still have no mechanism for forcing those individual to report why they are moving fiat between them. You could be doing anything, from buying a car to repaying a friend.

The idea is that everyone has to know each other's identity when sending a cryptocurrency. That means you would have to know my identity if you want to send me Bitcoin. This is complete nonsense.
I think the idea is that the government knows everybody's identity. You can still give me your wallet address and I can still send you some bitcoin without either of us knowing anything else about the other, but the government want to know who is sending and receiving those transactions, even if the people doing the transacting don't.
sr. member
Activity: 873
Merit: 268
Why they need 24 months for digital euro? Is it so hard to create gov level blockchain?
STT
legendary
Activity: 4088
Merit: 1452
China certainly wants to establish its own trade routes that have no need to go via dollar settlement.    They lack oil which is settled in dollars but they've been net buyers of gold for a couple decades, they must have long term ambitions to act independently.

UK sterling as part of global reserves is about 8% I think, its not significant globally for trade in many sectors but it has some continued ongoing historical relevance financially as many of contracts are settled in London, insurance and the commonwealth is some dynamic not an actual alliance just common ground from shared heritage to some extent is an unrated advantage.
   The problem with alot of the modern western currencies is they dont really deserve any association with the concept of a stable coin, if you link to these FIAT standards then it will be increasingly politics not so much trade based due to excessive liquidity, debt, fiscal deficits.   We're looking towards increasing instability from the effects of those gaps in economies growing not reducing, so to some extent every modern currency is over stated in its importance and by design they are running value into the ground in order to counter debt costs; stability in that sense is a certain course towards value lost.
legendary
Activity: 2912
Merit: 6403
Blackjack.fun
If and when the BoE launch a CBDC, will anyone outside of the UK even care?

If we exclude the British territories and countries that depend directly on British Aid, probably nobody will give a damn.
Maybe tourists?  Grin

Perhaps it's driven by the point stompix made above. If the Fed comes out with a proposal for a CBDC, then they have to take it to Congress and get it to pass a vote. If the ECB comes out with a proposal for a CBDC, then it has to be disseminated to 19 (or is it all 27?) member states, any one of which could veto it. They need to be sure they get it right or it'll never pass.

It's a CBDC tied to the euro, so it will be a question of the Eurozone 19, not of the whole EU, but the voting things still stand as I said before, any country could veto it at any time, plus I just read an article on how some countries have it in the law (or constitution) that the euro is the only legal currency, but the wording is so bad that it will need a re-write to accommodate a digital currency, Germany was given as an example but I really didn't get it, the quote was something like "euro banknotes are the only unrestricted legal means of payment" so assumingly this would need to be changed also in short, More headaches!

5 years is too long. they'd be taken over already by the adoption of stablecoins before they could test out to one city in their country. Chinese CBDC may have already spread out in a matter of months even in Africa.

I've read some news like that at the start of the year but it was just rumors and what-if questions, and then there was silence, anything new?
legendary
Activity: 3318
Merit: 1128
Well EU plans to start blocking anonymous wallet transaction which they could literally make it a hunt for criminals not just for launderer that they usually say.

And then this CBDC although it will take a long time before they could come up perfectly, stablecoins might also be screened or banned because they think that stablecoins are going to be widely used than the CBDC.
That sort of make sense when you consider the past. I mean making anonymous wallet transactions would be basically a way to hide your money from government and government only allows people who bribe them to do that, if you are not some shady bank bribing politicians at all times to keep quite about the things you do, then you will not be able to do anything illegal.

Look at the mafia world, do you really think that they are not known or can't be caught? I mean the governments of the world could end the mafia world in a day, and I mean ALL mafia all around the world, all cartels all drug lords, all mafioso everyone you can think of will be jailed within a day, millions of people all around the world, why are they not doing it? Because they are bribed that is why. So, if you want to do anything that is against the law, just bribe the lawmakers.
tyz
legendary
Activity: 3360
Merit: 1533
Their plans to create a CBDC have been around for a long time, even my developing country is already preparing for the realization of the CBDC, I read on the official Instagram of my country's central bank that they are in the research stage and it will take quite a long time.  Implicitly they did create CBDC as a form of their awareness of the development of BTC so that this will be a comparison asset for BTC that already existed before.


But if the Central Banks believe that a CBDC will stop/discourage people from buying, and using Bitcoin, then they cannot be more WRONG. I believe people HODL, and use Bitcoin because of two things, idealism, and greed. Bitcoin is censorship-resistant, and something that can still surge 10x more. CBDC can’t give you that.

Well EU plans to start blocking anonymous wallet transaction which they could literally make it a hunt for criminals not just for launderer that they usually say.

And then this CBDC although it will take a long time before they could come up perfectly, stablecoins might also be screened or banned because they think that stablecoins are going to be widely used than the CBDC.

Well the question is how they will implement this without creating a bureaucratic monster. The idea is that everyone has to know each other's identity when sending a cryptocurrency. That means you would have to know my identity if you want to send me Bitcoin. This is complete nonsense. When I make a cash payment, I don't ask the person across the street if I can see their ID before I make a payment.
hero member
Activity: 2114
Merit: 619
With other countries seriously considering this direction, the EU has finally start its Digital Euro (CBDC) project. It will take them 2 years to explore the potential of such a currency, and if they decide to actually apply it, they say it would take them at least 5 years to officially launch it. As an EU resident, I am not particularly excited about this, because I know that it will take them much more than 5 years to do anything, and all that time will come in handy for Bitcoin to become more mainstream in EU.

What interests me more is whether the EU will at some point start making some bad moves when it comes to Bitcoin or stablecoins, which they obviously consider competition (although they don't explicitly mention Bitcoin). Of course, this reasoning stems from the assumption that China decided to conduct a final battle with Bitcoin precisely because of its CBDC, which is already being tested on a large sample of people.

Today the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) decided to proceed with a 24-month central bank digital currency (CBDC) project to investigate the potential of a digital euro. Even if it decides to go ahead with a digital euro, the ECB President has previously stated it would take five years to launch.

While no decision has yet been made whether to issue a digital currency, the ECB and European national central banks have outlined several motivations over the last year or more. The first, as Lagarde stated, is to ensure that as cash usage declines, there is still central bank money but in a digital form. Without a CBDC, there’s a risk that private digital currencies, including stablecoins, will dominate, and they still might. Such a scenario would make it harder for the central bank to control monetary policy, maintain financial stability, ensure low cost payments and enable financial inclusion.

If the main intention behind the CDBC project is the idea that it's better to have a government-regulated cryptocurrency than a private cryptocurrency then I think it's better if there are no CDBC in near future. I don't think it's too positive for bitcoin because what governments want to do using this is to provide an alternate cryptocurrency to the user which they could use for their transaction and enjoy the benefits of cryptos but at the same time, it will be absolutely centralized. Chances are governments might decide to ban these cryptocurrencies after they have brought their CDBC, or make it a gateway currency, that nobody can buy any other crypto unless he buys the CDBC and other cryptos can be brought only through CDBC, this would make user identification from them pretty easier.
legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 18711
They say they want to do that - fine. Now, how to they propose enforcing that? If you complete KYC at a centralized exchange, then sure, it's easy to force you to complete KYC for your withdrawal addresses well. But what if you buy bitcoin peer to peer? How do they propose de-anonymizing mixed bitcoin being traded for cash to brand new addresses? And how do they plan to block transactions without forcing all miners to comply? I'm pretty sure US and Chinese miners aren't going to start blacklisting transactions because the EU tells them to.
legendary
Activity: 3668
Merit: 6382
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It is my opinion that the UK left the EU not only because the citizens wanted it

Many were tricked into "wanting" that. Clearly US and Russia too wanted a weaker EU and they've got it.
Both EU and UK will have more troubles than benefits from this, although on the long term it may end up as UK back into EU as a proper member (not a special one like before) and maybe with metric system too (for easier transfer of goods). But it will be painful until that is reached and we may have also troubles with (at least) Northern Ireland in the process.
COVID and non-EU borders are already visible for the lack of cheap workers to harvest UK crops, I've just read today in the news...
legendary
Activity: 3178
Merit: 1054

5 years is too long. they'd be taken over already by the adoption of stablecoins before they could test out to one city in their country. Chinese CBDC may have already spread out in a matter of months even in Africa.

It's interesting that the general view of the UK differs so much from within Europe as opposed to from outside Europe. Certainly they seem pretty intent on building walls rather than bridges at the moment (metaphorically speaking). As the world becomes more and more interconnected, I'm not sure what they are looking to gain by isolating themselves from it. I've not been paying a huge amount of attention to it recently, but from what news does filter through to me it seems to be driven by some desire to regain the "glory" of the "empire" - Make Britain Great Again nonsense, if you will.

It is my opinion that the UK left the EU not only because the citizens wanted it, but also because the US under President Trump advocated a strong sovereignist policy that greatly influenced the end result. In other words, the US was a very strong factor influencing Brexit whether someone wanted to accept it or not - and we all know that the UK has always been closer to the US than the EU because of the very strong historical ties that may have manifested themselves best in the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan.

If we go back for a moment in 2016 we can see how it all started.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has come out in support of Brexit, saying the UK would be “better off” outside of the European Union and lamenting the consequences of migration in the continent.


what influence Germany this time, because afaik they do have that Dexit plan as well?  i don't think DE are friends with US but when one had successfully cut ties i guess some of them will follow.


legendary
Activity: 3234
Merit: 5637
Blackjack.fun-Free Raffle-Join&Win $50🎲
It's interesting that the general view of the UK differs so much from within Europe as opposed to from outside Europe. Certainly they seem pretty intent on building walls rather than bridges at the moment (metaphorically speaking). As the world becomes more and more interconnected, I'm not sure what they are looking to gain by isolating themselves from it. I've not been paying a huge amount of attention to it recently, but from what news does filter through to me it seems to be driven by some desire to regain the "glory" of the "empire" - Make Britain Great Again nonsense, if you will.

It is my opinion that the UK left the EU not only because the citizens wanted it, but also because the US under President Trump advocated a strong sovereignist policy that greatly influenced the end result. In other words, the US was a very strong factor influencing Brexit whether someone wanted to accept it or not - and we all know that the UK has always been closer to the US than the EU because of the very strong historical ties that may have manifested themselves best in the invasion of Iraq or Afghanistan.

If we go back for a moment in 2016 we can see how it all started.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, has come out in support of Brexit, saying the UK would be “better off” outside of the European Union and lamenting the consequences of migration in the continent.

And here we can see how it all ended.

Congratulations to Boris Johnson on his great WIN! Britain and the United States will now be free to strike a massive new Trade Deal after BREXIT. This deal has the potential to be far bigger and more lucrative than any deal that could be made with the E.U. Celebrate Boris!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2019

If we look at things realistically, it is clear to everyone that the ultimate goal of the UK's exit from the EU was to weaken the Union, which in the end happened.
legendary
Activity: 3668
Merit: 6382
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If the ECB comes out with a proposal for a CBDC, then it has to be disseminated to 19 (or is it all 27?) member states, any one of which could veto it. They need to be sure they get it right or it'll never pass.

O, clearly. That was part of doing it good. But I have a feeling that's more than that.
But time will tell - whether they do any real step before or after the FED.
full member
Activity: 1946
Merit: 112
I cannot say that the emergence of the digital Euro is good or bad. The fact is that there is a high probability that the financial world will disintegrate into currency zones in the near future, and then the appearance of the digital Euro, Yuan and other digital currencies of different countries is quite obvious. I believe that more than one state is not interested in making the official currency the currency over which they have no influence and this greatly affects the security of each country. So the emergence of the digital Euro is a common occurrence for me. As for BTC and other cryptocurrencies, some of them will probably work and will continue to simply be not so much money, but assets to preserve and increase profits, such as digital gold.
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