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This is how I understand it Right now, if you, for convenience reasons, don't want to carry cash around but want to pay digitally you are basically forced to o

This is how I understand it Right now, if you, for convenience reasons, don't want to carry cash around but want to pay digitally you are basically forced to open a commercial bank deposit. That has some implications - risk - bank can go out of business (though it's insured. But then again the cost of the insurance is baked into the system even though you might not see it directly) - bank can invest your money on your behalf without you having any say in how it's invested (say in a coal plant in India) With digital euro private individuals will gain ability to open accounts directly with the central bank which solves both problems. Central bank cannot go out of business (by definition), and they are not in the investment business. So digital euro would really be a digital version of the bank notes under the mattress.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
It's a great idea imho, but requires central banks to more rapidly modernize (both from a technology and policy perspective). It banks the unbanked or underbanked, and it provides basic financial services to citizens as they should be treated: as a utility (no cost citizen deposit accounts, low cost instant payments, etc). This would also enable policy efforts the ECB wants to champion (srgseg has a great comment about this [1]). There are efforts on the US Fed front to push for this also [2]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24688205 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24688205 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24593343