16 ms·

Delft café premieres with EEMCS blockchain euro

110 points by synctext 6y ago

synctext 6y ago
Responsible Professor here from Delft University, AMA. Note this is not a normal blockchain: its an offline-first blockchain [1]. Open source [2]. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-pouwelse-trustchain-01.html https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-pouwelse-trustchain-01.html [2] https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp
- elcomet 6y ago
  Could you give a high-level explanation of what's an offline-first blockchain here, and what's the difference between TrustChain and Bitcoin ? The draft seems very low-level and complex to read, and the article contains very few technical information.
  - synctext 6y ago
    Trustchain is a ledger which is consensus-free. Forget anything you know about chains and ledgers. By using legally valid digital signatures it is possible to sign agreements which are irrefutable. If you have two parties which sign a contract, it become legally enforceable. Trustchain requires that any block is signed by multiple parties and thus become legally enforceable. Every transaction forms its own "micro-block". Mono-signature transactions are strictly not allowed (e.g. Bitcoin,Ethereum approach). Once signatures are added to a block its valid: instant finality. Weird... Yes, it's a strange approach, even older then Bitcoin :-) Perhaps its useful. See "bandwidth-as-a-currency" news item in BBC News, 1 Sep 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6971904.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6971904.stm Edit: no native token or money creation. Its just fabric for recording transaction micro-blocks. Non-profit. So nothing like Bitcoin at all. So works very well with dApps, Distributed Apps, no smart contracts needed. Scientific publication about Euros, DAO, dApps, passport-grade identity deployment: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3428662.3429744 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3428662.3429744
    - malikNF 6y ago
      What's a "legally valid digital signature" in the context?
      - synctext 6y ago
        Short answer: nobody knows yet. Its taking shape. UK minister of Digital infrastructure only some weeks ago announce their vision, far away from running code and new laws [1]. Dutch secretary-of-state on same days also send his digital ID vision to parliament [2]. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-digital-id... [2] https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/detail?id=2021Z02985&did=2021D06488 https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/det...
        p_l 6y ago
        Well, in EU, there's existing digital signature law with (working) provisions for signing legally-binding contracts digitally... Maybe those are some new schemes under that framework?
        pqs 6y ago
        I'm Spaniard. My national ID has a chip and I use it daily to sign documents with a card reader and a password. You can change your password at police stations that issue ID cards. The signature is legally valid.
    - littlestymaar 6y ago
      So is there a reason to call it “blockchain” except for marketing reasons? (I'm currently working on a Paxos-based distributed system for an industrial application, and my client insist in calling that a “blockchain” in all internal communication because, you know “blockchain” sounds cool to them)
      - synctext 6y ago
- CasperDern 6y ago
  > The customer scans the code, sees the amount to be debited, and presses OK. The amount then moves from one phone to another without the need for WiFi or another wireless network How does the business verify a transaction was successful? It seems like information only flows one way.
- rebuilder 6y ago
  Could you elaborate on double-spend protection a little? I skimmed the protocol draft and came away with the impression that the goal is not so much to prevent double spending directly as it is to flag users who do attempt it, so future payees know to refuse to do business with them. Did I understand correctly?
  - synctext 6y ago
    Exactly. Using protocols to prevent double spending hurts performance and scalability. Detect fraudsters and ignoring them is cheap. This is a fundamental issue I believe. If you have a stable legal ecosystem you can use the law of the land to ensure that double spending has real-world consequences. Preventing double spending is expensive. Guaranteed double spending _detection_ might also be sufficient and scales horizontally.
    - michaelscott 6y ago
      I'm interested in your thoughts on the performance impact of double spend prevention. What algorithms have you looked at, working on this project?
      - devos50 6y ago
        we are building upon our own lightweight, scalable distributed ledger which has been in development for many years now. This ledger is based on the swift detection of double-spend behavior. You can find details on the fraud detection algorithm in our peer-reviewed paper, see https://dicg2020.github.io/papers/devos.pdf https://dicg2020.github.io/papers/devos.pdf (an extended version is currently under review). We have also performed scalability experiments on our nation-wide compute cluster to estimate the throughput of our distributed ledger. These experiments hint that our ledger is easily capable of handling 100.000+ transactions/sec.
    - tphyahoo2 6y ago
      https://standardcrypto.wordpress.com/2021/03/10/the-your-papers-please-argument-for-cbdcs/ https://standardcrypto.wordpress.com/2021/03/10/the-your-pap... The "your papers please" argument. It's true. If you live in a world where you are compelled to present an identity for any financial transaction, then there is no need for bitcoin, to prevent double spending.
- wrnr 6y ago
  How is this linked to an iban account. Is it a bit like a one off sepa? I've always been curious as to why iban is not used more, say I don't care for credit cards and just want to trust my customers.
  - p_l 6y ago
    Well, IBAN is just universal account number. The actual transfer systems are more complex and differ heavily between EU countries. You have SWIFT, which is general correspondence-based system for international transfers, of which SEPA is essentially a special agreement on how certain setup of SWIFT transfers are to be handled (essentially if you select certain transfer parameters you fall under agreement rules, otherwise not). Intra-country transfer systems have more variability, unfortunately I can only speak about how UK and Poland did it, with UK having a very legacy numbering scheme where you only touch IBAN when you do international transfers (at least when I dealt with it last time in 2014), whereas in Poland all banking uses IBAN accounts (minus PL prefix) because that's what national interbank clearing system uses - and by extension paying for things by bank transfer are the norm, with widespread usage of the large "address space" of IBAN to create individual accounts even per contract (for example, if you take a loan, or pay for some service, you will usually pay to a bank account made just for that contract). Ultimately, the difference is that there's effectively no extra cost for handling bank transfers in Poland, the clearing happens fast enough (usually max 1 business day, there are multiple clearing batches per day and it essentially depends on whether your transfer enters the system before the last batch of the day is calculated - with UK, I encountered multi-day wait times). Since there are no cheques, you essentially have three options - cash, bank transfers, and cards - and accepting bank transfers is the simplest approach outside of "cash direct in hand". An ecosystem of utilities to make it even simpler had grown out of making common simple & fast way of doing electronic transfers.
    - kmlx 6y ago
      > with UK, I encountered multi-day wait times with Faster Payments local transfers in the UK happen instantaneously. this has been the case for more than a decade. all banks participate and makes transferring funds in the UK a breeze. to give you an example as to how fast this payment system is: i press pay and the money is received on the other end before the “successful transfer” screen pops-up on my device :) for international payments i’ve noticed that it takes less time to receive money from the UK than it is for the receiving party to do a local transfer :) it’s mind boggling honestly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service
- bluesign 6y ago
  There doesn't seem any privacy references in the draft. Can you give a bit information about privacy side?
  - synctext 6y ago
    That is a lengthy story.. We basically forked the Tor protocol and decentralised it. This makes it Bittorrent friendly, offer end-2-end crypto, and would scale to Internet-wide usage. We're planning to port our deployed Python Tor-stack towards Kotlin for the Superapp and Trustchain. Specifications: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Hidden-Services-Specifications-for-anonymous-seeding https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Hidden-Services-Spec...
    - bluesign 6y ago
      Thanks, my question was most inline with comments here about double spend. Detecting double spend is easy as you said, but I am curious about the consequences. Will this system will be somehow connected to real IDs? Who will in the network will have access to this data? If so what is the process hiding my real ID from my identifier? I did shopping at the market, what will prevent them to see my all spending history? If it is not connected to real ID somehow, what is preventing me to create a new identity?
      - synctext 6y ago
        That is the golden question. How anonymous will the upcoming digital Euro be? Politicians and European Central Bank will decide on this soon. Delft University has tested out technology which could offer equal privacy as cash money. Will this be legal?
- Proven 6y ago
  If that's the case why does the government have to be involved? From the article: > In contrast, the digital euro is free. It's interest-free: it comes with a built in 2% (target) theft through inflation. It may have no transaction fee, but just owning it costs 2% per year, compared to major cryptos that bear interest and appreciate. Not a hard choice....
- riffraff 6y ago
  how does this compare to GNU Taler[0] ? [0] https://taler.net/en/ https://taler.net/en/
  - synctext 6y ago
    Its different mostly in the methodology and requirements. GNU Taller is developed without input by governments or existing legal frameworks. Christian Grothoff has done pioneering work for years. Its ideology driven, not government driven. We're different. We are trying to ensure compliance with very complex eIDAS regulations, GDPR, KYC, and AML. In partnership with governments and Brussels are trying to discover what is possible and desired.
    - kitkat_new 6y ago
      Could you be a little more specific how these aspects manifest themselves, please?
- sigio 6y ago
  Please... don't name your protocol IPv[0-9] when it's not a RFC-based IP protocol.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    That first link seems to claim it's an (expired?) IETF draft on its way to become a RFC.
- rahkiin 6y ago
  Is there a specific reason there are only Android apps in the repository? Is there a restriction in iOS that makes this app not portable, or were researchers only known with the Android ecosystem?
spanstream 6y ago
Interesting to see such an experiment
kseistrup 6y ago
Where can we buy these EuroToken/SREUR?
- synctext 6y ago
  Currently the only route is to: request permission from a Central Bank in Eurozone, download the Gateway code, and finally issue your own coins. (we got approval from our central bank) Docs: https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp
  - kseistrup 6y ago
    Oh, ok. Thanks. That sounds more cumbersome than I had expected. I think I'll just wait until they become generally available.
I_am_tiberius 6y ago
> Money transfers belong in public hands I think more important than putting the transfer of money in public hands is to put the monetary system itself in public hands.
- unclesams-uncle 6y ago
  Central banks in many countries (including all of Europe, US, Canada, Japan, etc) are all effectively in public hands. The banks' boards and many employees are political appointees nominated by elected officials. They are accountable to legislatures. I'm not sure how, other than go for a "Swiss-style" direct election of directors (which, considering the complexities of macroeconomics, would be like shooting ourselves in the foot with a cannon), you could get more public than that.
  - villasv 6y ago
    This. Failing to understand public institutions as public hands is one of the reasons people misjudge politics so badly.
    - amelius 6y ago
      "In public hands" can mean a lot of things. For example, if I run a business which banks do not approve of, then they can block my account or make it impossible to make transfers. What good does it if the bank is "in public hands" in that case?
      - I_am_tiberius 6y ago
        What I understand as "in public hands" in this context is that government cannot control or impact it.
  - yao420 6y ago
    No, a nomination by the president is not the same as being in the public hands. Also, 14 year terms makes them pretty unaccountable to anyone even the presidents who nominated them, much less to citizens.
whitepaint 6y ago
Maybe I'm missing something but why is this interesting? It's not related to cryptos at all. Isn't this just a public database owned by one entity?
- LeonM 6y ago
  Dutch citizen here. As far as I can tell, this is programmable money backed by legal digital signatures. For the first time since the whole blockchain hypetrain started I am actually interested in this. The Netherlands doesn't 'need' cryptocurrencies, as our banking system already works very well. We can already easily transfer money for free using a mobile phone (apps known as 'Tikkie', and 'betaalverzoek'). We have a secure and instant online payment system (called 'iDEAL') since 2006, which works very well. We also have some pretty decent ways to do digital signatures (called 'DigiD' and 'e-Herkenning'). I believe that any blockchain tech would be a step back when it comes to cost, insurance and end-user convenience. Seeing an alternative payment system that is programmable seems refreshing to me. I just wished they didn't use the word 'blockchain' in their marketing lingo.
  - whitepaint 6y ago
    > As far as I can tell, this is programmable money backed by legal digital signatures. Oh, I didn't get that from the article. You mean people can implement logic using smart contracts and such?
Priem19 6y ago
First, I'm happy to finally see a blockchain project that isn't accompanied by its own token, and therefore isn't pursuing a quick cash grab, nor incentivizes gambling. Second, what do you tell your friends and family who ask if they should buy bitcoin? As a former owner, I've become ridiculously wary due to the shady individuals behind it. If the price is propped up with shady fiat money and imaginary exchange tokens, what guarantees that the bitcoin price reflects the true supply and demand?
- villasv 6y ago
  > Second, what do you tell your friends and family who ask if they should buy bitcoin? I say "go ahead but don't put more than 5% of your portfolio on it, preferably 1% or less". Also, I'd recommend buying a crypto index fund instead of BTC directly. Personally, I'm long term bearish. But the last decade has shown that "long term" may be reaaaaally long.
Shadonototro 6y ago
it's not a digital EURO, it's a cryptocurrency scam EURO is not something random people can use to promote their ponzi schemes
- birracerveza 6y ago
  "crypto bad" - you
- _joel 6y ago
  > He emphasises that money transfers are an essential infrastructure that belongs in public hands. As far as he is concerned, De Nederlandse Bank (DNB, the Dutch Central Bank) is the appropriate body to bring the digital euro into circulation after the physical euro becomes redundant.
- JustFinishedBSG 6y ago
  Except it's not a cryptocurrency at all. Or even a blockchain. They just frame it as such because hey researchers need branding and funding... Just read the damn thing
nixpulvis 6y ago
Ah yes, here's an app I can download to manage my money and music in one place, perfect! /s
geenidee 6y ago
So, i have an old phone, i put 100 euro on it, then put it in flightmode, and make a backup. Then i start paying stuff, and when the 100 is finished, i put the backup back. I know the double spend is not solved with this paper, but how does the retailer know this is a phone from a double spender? He shows a QR code to the customer, and not visa versa. The retailer does not know anything from this customer.

110 points by synctext 6y ago

Responsible Professor here from Delft University, AMA. Note this is not a normal blockchain: its an offline-first blockchain [1]. Open source [2]. [1] https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-pouwelse-trustchain-01.html https://tools.ietf.org/id/draft-pouwelse-trustchain-01.html [2] https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp

elcomet 6y ago
Could you give a high-level explanation of what's an offline-first blockchain here, and what's the difference between TrustChain and Bitcoin ? The draft seems very low-level and complex to read, and the article contains very few technical information.
- synctext 6y ago
  Trustchain is a ledger which is consensus-free. Forget anything you know about chains and ledgers. By using legally valid digital signatures it is possible to sign agreements which are irrefutable. If you have two parties which sign a contract, it become legally enforceable. Trustchain requires that any block is signed by multiple parties and thus become legally enforceable. Every transaction forms its own "micro-block". Mono-signature transactions are strictly not allowed (e.g. Bitcoin,Ethereum approach). Once signatures are added to a block its valid: instant finality. Weird... Yes, it's a strange approach, even older then Bitcoin :-) Perhaps its useful. See "bandwidth-as-a-currency" news item in BBC News, 1 Sep 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6971904.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6971904.stm Edit: no native token or money creation. Its just fabric for recording transaction micro-blocks. Non-profit. So nothing like Bitcoin at all. So works very well with dApps, Distributed Apps, no smart contracts needed. Scientific publication about Euros, DAO, dApps, passport-grade identity deployment: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3428662.3429744 https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3428662.3429744
  - malikNF 6y ago
    What's a "legally valid digital signature" in the context?
    - synctext 6y ago
      Short answer: nobody knows yet. Its taking shape. UK minister of Digital infrastructure only some weeks ago announce their vision, far away from running code and new laws [1]. Dutch secretary-of-state on same days also send his digital ID vision to parliament [2]. [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-digital-identity-and-attributes-trust-framework https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-uk-digital-id... [2] https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/detail?id=2021Z02985&did=2021D06488 https://www.tweedekamer.nl/kamerstukken/brieven_regering/det...
      - p_l 6y ago
        Well, in EU, there's existing digital signature law with (working) provisions for signing legally-binding contracts digitally... Maybe those are some new schemes under that framework?
        pqs 6y ago
        I'm Spaniard. My national ID has a chip and I use it daily to sign documents with a card reader and a password. You can change your password at police stations that issue ID cards. The signature is legally valid.
  - littlestymaar 6y ago
    So is there a reason to call it “blockchain” except for marketing reasons? (I'm currently working on a Paxos-based distributed system for an industrial application, and my client insist in calling that a “blockchain” in all internal communication because, you know “blockchain” sounds cool to them)
    - synctext 6y ago
CasperDern 6y ago
> The customer scans the code, sees the amount to be debited, and presses OK. The amount then moves from one phone to another without the need for WiFi or another wireless network How does the business verify a transaction was successful? It seems like information only flows one way.
rebuilder 6y ago
Could you elaborate on double-spend protection a little? I skimmed the protocol draft and came away with the impression that the goal is not so much to prevent double spending directly as it is to flag users who do attempt it, so future payees know to refuse to do business with them. Did I understand correctly?
- synctext 6y ago
  Exactly. Using protocols to prevent double spending hurts performance and scalability. Detect fraudsters and ignoring them is cheap. This is a fundamental issue I believe. If you have a stable legal ecosystem you can use the law of the land to ensure that double spending has real-world consequences. Preventing double spending is expensive. Guaranteed double spending _detection_ might also be sufficient and scales horizontally.
  - michaelscott 6y ago
    I'm interested in your thoughts on the performance impact of double spend prevention. What algorithms have you looked at, working on this project?
    - devos50 6y ago
      we are building upon our own lightweight, scalable distributed ledger which has been in development for many years now. This ledger is based on the swift detection of double-spend behavior. You can find details on the fraud detection algorithm in our peer-reviewed paper, see https://dicg2020.github.io/papers/devos.pdf https://dicg2020.github.io/papers/devos.pdf (an extended version is currently under review). We have also performed scalability experiments on our nation-wide compute cluster to estimate the throughput of our distributed ledger. These experiments hint that our ledger is easily capable of handling 100.000+ transactions/sec.
  - tphyahoo2 6y ago
    https://standardcrypto.wordpress.com/2021/03/10/the-your-papers-please-argument-for-cbdcs/ https://standardcrypto.wordpress.com/2021/03/10/the-your-pap... The "your papers please" argument. It's true. If you live in a world where you are compelled to present an identity for any financial transaction, then there is no need for bitcoin, to prevent double spending.
wrnr 6y ago
How is this linked to an iban account. Is it a bit like a one off sepa? I've always been curious as to why iban is not used more, say I don't care for credit cards and just want to trust my customers.
- p_l 6y ago
  Well, IBAN is just universal account number. The actual transfer systems are more complex and differ heavily between EU countries. You have SWIFT, which is general correspondence-based system for international transfers, of which SEPA is essentially a special agreement on how certain setup of SWIFT transfers are to be handled (essentially if you select certain transfer parameters you fall under agreement rules, otherwise not). Intra-country transfer systems have more variability, unfortunately I can only speak about how UK and Poland did it, with UK having a very legacy numbering scheme where you only touch IBAN when you do international transfers (at least when I dealt with it last time in 2014), whereas in Poland all banking uses IBAN accounts (minus PL prefix) because that's what national interbank clearing system uses - and by extension paying for things by bank transfer are the norm, with widespread usage of the large "address space" of IBAN to create individual accounts even per contract (for example, if you take a loan, or pay for some service, you will usually pay to a bank account made just for that contract). Ultimately, the difference is that there's effectively no extra cost for handling bank transfers in Poland, the clearing happens fast enough (usually max 1 business day, there are multiple clearing batches per day and it essentially depends on whether your transfer enters the system before the last batch of the day is calculated - with UK, I encountered multi-day wait times). Since there are no cheques, you essentially have three options - cash, bank transfers, and cards - and accepting bank transfers is the simplest approach outside of "cash direct in hand". An ecosystem of utilities to make it even simpler had grown out of making common simple & fast way of doing electronic transfers.
  - kmlx 6y ago
    > with UK, I encountered multi-day wait times with Faster Payments local transfers in the UK happen instantaneously. this has been the case for more than a decade. all banks participate and makes transferring funds in the UK a breeze. to give you an example as to how fast this payment system is: i press pay and the money is received on the other end before the “successful transfer” screen pops-up on my device :) for international payments i’ve noticed that it takes less time to receive money from the UK than it is for the receiving party to do a local transfer :) it’s mind boggling honestly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster_Payments_Service
bluesign 6y ago
There doesn't seem any privacy references in the draft. Can you give a bit information about privacy side?
- synctext 6y ago
  That is a lengthy story.. We basically forked the Tor protocol and decentralised it. This makes it Bittorrent friendly, offer end-2-end crypto, and would scale to Internet-wide usage. We're planning to port our deployed Python Tor-stack towards Kotlin for the Superapp and Trustchain. Specifications: https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Hidden-Services-Specifications-for-anonymous-seeding https://github.com/Tribler/tribler/wiki/Hidden-Services-Spec...
  - bluesign 6y ago
    Thanks, my question was most inline with comments here about double spend. Detecting double spend is easy as you said, but I am curious about the consequences. Will this system will be somehow connected to real IDs? Who will in the network will have access to this data? If so what is the process hiding my real ID from my identifier? I did shopping at the market, what will prevent them to see my all spending history? If it is not connected to real ID somehow, what is preventing me to create a new identity?
    - synctext 6y ago
      That is the golden question. How anonymous will the upcoming digital Euro be? Politicians and European Central Bank will decide on this soon. Delft University has tested out technology which could offer equal privacy as cash money. Will this be legal?
Proven 6y ago
If that's the case why does the government have to be involved? From the article: > In contrast, the digital euro is free. It's interest-free: it comes with a built in 2% (target) theft through inflation. It may have no transaction fee, but just owning it costs 2% per year, compared to major cryptos that bear interest and appreciate. Not a hard choice....
riffraff 6y ago
how does this compare to GNU Taler[0] ? [0] https://taler.net/en/ https://taler.net/en/
- synctext 6y ago
  Its different mostly in the methodology and requirements. GNU Taller is developed without input by governments or existing legal frameworks. Christian Grothoff has done pioneering work for years. Its ideology driven, not government driven. We're different. We are trying to ensure compliance with very complex eIDAS regulations, GDPR, KYC, and AML. In partnership with governments and Brussels are trying to discover what is possible and desired.
  - kitkat_new 6y ago
    Could you be a little more specific how these aspects manifest themselves, please?
sigio 6y ago
Please... don't name your protocol IPv[0-9] when it's not a RFC-based IP protocol.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  That first link seems to claim it's an (expired?) IETF draft on its way to become a RFC.
rahkiin 6y ago
Is there a specific reason there are only Android apps in the repository? Is there a restriction in iOS that makes this app not portable, or were researchers only known with the Android ecosystem?

spanstream 6y ago

Interesting to see such an experiment

kseistrup 6y ago

Where can we buy these EuroToken/SREUR?

synctext 6y ago
Currently the only route is to: request permission from a Central Bank in Eurozone, download the Gateway code, and finally issue your own coins. (we got approval from our central bank) Docs: https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp https://github.com/Tribler/trustchain-superapp
- kseistrup 6y ago
  Oh, ok. Thanks. That sounds more cumbersome than I had expected. I think I'll just wait until they become generally available.

I_am_tiberius 6y ago

> Money transfers belong in public hands I think more important than putting the transfer of money in public hands is to put the monetary system itself in public hands.

unclesams-uncle 6y ago
Central banks in many countries (including all of Europe, US, Canada, Japan, etc) are all effectively in public hands. The banks' boards and many employees are political appointees nominated by elected officials. They are accountable to legislatures. I'm not sure how, other than go for a "Swiss-style" direct election of directors (which, considering the complexities of macroeconomics, would be like shooting ourselves in the foot with a cannon), you could get more public than that.
- villasv 6y ago
  This. Failing to understand public institutions as public hands is one of the reasons people misjudge politics so badly.
  - amelius 6y ago
    "In public hands" can mean a lot of things. For example, if I run a business which banks do not approve of, then they can block my account or make it impossible to make transfers. What good does it if the bank is "in public hands" in that case?
    - I_am_tiberius 6y ago
      What I understand as "in public hands" in this context is that government cannot control or impact it.
- yao420 6y ago
  No, a nomination by the president is not the same as being in the public hands. Also, 14 year terms makes them pretty unaccountable to anyone even the presidents who nominated them, much less to citizens.

whitepaint 6y ago

Maybe I'm missing something but why is this interesting? It's not related to cryptos at all. Isn't this just a public database owned by one entity?

LeonM 6y ago
Dutch citizen here. As far as I can tell, this is programmable money backed by legal digital signatures. For the first time since the whole blockchain hypetrain started I am actually interested in this. The Netherlands doesn't 'need' cryptocurrencies, as our banking system already works very well. We can already easily transfer money for free using a mobile phone (apps known as 'Tikkie', and 'betaalverzoek'). We have a secure and instant online payment system (called 'iDEAL') since 2006, which works very well. We also have some pretty decent ways to do digital signatures (called 'DigiD' and 'e-Herkenning'). I believe that any blockchain tech would be a step back when it comes to cost, insurance and end-user convenience. Seeing an alternative payment system that is programmable seems refreshing to me. I just wished they didn't use the word 'blockchain' in their marketing lingo.
- whitepaint 6y ago
  > As far as I can tell, this is programmable money backed by legal digital signatures. Oh, I didn't get that from the article. You mean people can implement logic using smart contracts and such?

Priem19 6y ago

First, I'm happy to finally see a blockchain project that isn't accompanied by its own token, and therefore isn't pursuing a quick cash grab, nor incentivizes gambling. Second, what do you tell your friends and family who ask if they should buy bitcoin? As a former owner, I've become ridiculously wary due to the shady individuals behind it. If the price is propped up with shady fiat money and imaginary exchange tokens, what guarantees that the bitcoin price reflects the true supply and demand?

villasv 6y ago
> Second, what do you tell your friends and family who ask if they should buy bitcoin? I say "go ahead but don't put more than 5% of your portfolio on it, preferably 1% or less". Also, I'd recommend buying a crypto index fund instead of BTC directly. Personally, I'm long term bearish. But the last decade has shown that "long term" may be reaaaaally long.

Shadonototro 6y ago

it's not a digital EURO, it's a cryptocurrency scam EURO is not something random people can use to promote their ponzi schemes

birracerveza 6y ago
"crypto bad" - you
_joel 6y ago
> He emphasises that money transfers are an essential infrastructure that belongs in public hands. As far as he is concerned, De Nederlandse Bank (DNB, the Dutch Central Bank) is the appropriate body to bring the digital euro into circulation after the physical euro becomes redundant.
JustFinishedBSG 6y ago
Except it's not a cryptocurrency at all. Or even a blockchain. They just frame it as such because hey researchers need branding and funding... Just read the damn thing

nixpulvis 6y ago

Ah yes, here's an app I can download to manage my money and music in one place, perfect! /s

geenidee 6y ago

So, i have an old phone, i put 100 euro on it, then put it in flightmode, and make a backup. Then i start paying stuff, and when the 100 is finished, i put the backup back. I know the double spend is not solved with this paper, but how does the retailer know this is a phone from a double spender? He shows a QR code to the customer, and not visa versa. The retailer does not know anything from this customer.