6 ms·

Eurosystem launches digital euro project

51 points by NKosmatos 5y ago

NKosmatos 5y ago
The European Central Bank (ECB) has decided today to launch the investigation phase of a digital euro project lasting 24 months, noting that a digital euro would complement cash, not replace it.
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
  Stupid car analogy: Introducing spy cars with real time state captured GPS, remote control and killswitch and always on police surveillance (audio/video). We note that this will not replace horses.
- RandomLensman 5y ago
  Eventually cash will be considered suspicious for any transaction while the digital Euro would be transparent to law enforcement. This will happen slowly, with limits to cash transactions being lowered, larger denominations removed from circulation etc. On the transparency side it will again start out with praises sung to its privacy and then "stuff happens", i.e. cannot be that a digital Euro is good for criminals and terrorists...
  - trompetenaccoun 5y ago
    See my other comment, it very much depends on how it's implemented, which hasn't been decided yet. If you're European, now is the time to write your MEPs about this. To make sure they understand we care about privacy. Realistically though, with the speed they're researching things I wouldn't be surprised if we have functioning blockchains offering all kinds of decentralized global banking services by the time they decided to launch anything at all.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - nicbou 5y ago
    You will never get Germans to switch away from cash.
    - endofreach 5y ago
      It will happen. Whenever I see the ÖRR (public broadcast) talk about cash lately, it is always mainly focused on how criminals use cash and it is used for money laundering & drug trafficking. There is even a podcast episode of the ÖRR with pro & contra of cash. The pro arguments are very weak, but the contra side is so strong, it is ridiculous. I don‘t like this direction. Germany is slowly developing into a surveillance state, but the worst thing: it‘s not dictated, a lot of people „want“ it that way. I guess it‘s not a surprise to anyone. Still good beer though
nabla9 5y ago
Note: Digital currency is not a synonym for cryptocurrency. In the context of central banks, it usually means that the same mechanisms that allow the banks access to central bank money are made available for other private businesses and individuals. Practical implementation can be crypto ledger or something else. It would just show in central bank balance sheet. If the central banks want to add money into the system, they could give it directly to the consumers (helicopter money), not to banks.
- Lionga 5y ago
  The reverse would be also true they can just take money as they like (e.g. negativ interest or simple one time reductions of consumer balances as it happened in Cyprus). Or just freeze all your assets. I for one fear even more control of the incompetent, ever money hungry governments
  - iSnow 5y ago
    Cyprus wasn't the central bank and especially not the ECB, though.
Proven 5y ago
Excellent. They'll need that for "free shit"-style givaways such as equity-enhancing campaigns, fight against climate changes and socially beneficial spending and - eventually - Basic Income. As long as cross-referencing wallet owner's details doesn't uncover undesirable comments, group memberships and other red flags on social networks, of course. Let's take a look at the nonsense from the PR: > Our work aims to ensure that in the digital age citizens and firms continue to have access to the safest form of money, central bank money They have that today, it's called gold. They also can use central bank money through e-banking services that have been around 10-20 years. > A digital euro must be able to meet the needs of Europeans while at the same time helping to prevent illicit activities and avoiding any undesirable impact on financial stability and monetary policy. e-RMB, but Made in the EU. Nobody wants to use that crap, but many surely won't mind to receive freebies that way (and instantly convert them to cash, precious metals or crypto). > According to these experiments, a digital euro core infrastructure would be environmentally friendly: for the architectures that were tested, the power used to run tens of thousands of transactions per second is negligible compared with the energy consumption of crypto-assets such as bitcoin. That is funny. Almost no one uses Bitcoin for daily transactions. Those cryptos that are used for frequent transactions don't need to do "tens of thousands of transactions per second" - we can have ten of them, each catering to a different use case or audience and doing 5,000 tps, and avoid all the baggage that comes with this euro-shit-coin. How about you shut down the ECB and fire all the useless eaters employed over there, that's a lot of CO2, don't you think?
hcktntng 5y ago
It will probably be another typical EU design by committee disaster, like the cookie banner laws.
- tux3 5y ago
  The cookie laws have good intentions. They say that you don't have to put up a cookie banner, because you only use necessary cookies. Unless you're doing things that require consent, then you gotta ask or you gotta stop doing that.
- hhhhhhiirirjff 5y ago
  Or x400
- mrtksn 5y ago
  Better invest in PR then. For some reason people believe that EU is forcing developers to put cookie banners on websites.
  - herbst 5y ago
    People should have noticed that these banners usually only show up on websites that heavily track their users. And most of the time they just redirect you away if you don't agree to the tracking. Honestly people just use an adblocker and don't trust weird banners
- Barrin92 5y ago
  that's not a design disaster, that's a company privacy disaster. The cookie laws just make transparent and explicit the amount of tracking that businesses engage in. The target of your criticism should not be the EU, it should be websites who put stumbling blocks into the user experience because they want to force you to consent to their data gathering. Compliance could be very simple without any cookie banners, just let the user opt-in and turn it off by default.
  - bijant 5y ago
    In the best case a cookie banner gives me an opportunity to trust a site owner (not necessarily a company) that they won‘t use cookies to do invasive tracking I didn’t agree to. Oftentimes sites just straight up require consent to „necessary“ cookies in order to use the site at all. In these cases the EU imposed Cookie Banners don’t even give me the option to disable cookie based tracking. In other cases it takes minutes of my time to navigate the cookie banner to get the desired results. Why should I choose such an ineffective solution if there are superior technical solutions to the same problem such as privacy aware browsers or extensions that don’t require user trust in site owners compliance but stop cookie based tracking on a technical level ? The Cookie banner legislation actually did nothing at all for privacy, quite the opposite it made browsing the web in incognito mode much more annoying as you’re constantly forced to close cookie banners before beeing able to consume the actual on-site content. (Googles (coincidental?) Decision to disallow chrome extensions in incognito mode renders relevant anti-cookie-banner extensions useless)
ricardobeat 5y ago
Can someone more versed in this explain what the concept is? As far as I'm concerned the Euro is already digital, based on banks' ledgers. I haven't used a physical bank note in years.
- pintxo 5y ago
  > Both the Eurosystem TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) and alternatives such as blockchain were proven capable of processing more than 40,000 transactions per second. The experiments also suggested that architectures combining centralised and decentralised elements are possible. Sounds like they are evaluating to make Bank accounts obsolete? Sidenotes: > Experiments were conducted in the four following areas: the digital euro ledger; privacy and anti-money laundering; limits on digital euro in circulation; end-user access while not connected to the internet and facilitating inclusiveness with appropriate devices. No major technical obstacles were identified to any of the assessed design options. I am interested to hear about a system providing privacy and anti-money-laundering capabilities at the same time. Aren't they mutually exclusive? > According to these experiments, a digital euro core infrastructure would be environmentally friendly: for the architectures that were tested, the power used to run tens of thousands of transactions per second is negligible compared with the energy consumption of crypto-assets such as bitcoin. Bitcoins power usage per transaction is outrageous, if they choose this as their benchmark, it sounds like their transactions are quite power hungry compared to the status quo?
  - rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
    It is only outrageous if you don't understand why we spend the energy on security. Decentralization is an expensive endeavor. Centralized solutions are generally cheaper in every way. Bitcoiners believe that energy is essential for the security of the chain, to ensure it is decentralized and censorship resistant. When and if you come to understand this, you see growing energy usage as a good thing, infact, the best thing. It is too simple to think of it as 'energy per tx', this is a bad metric, and illogical. One must consider the energy being used to secure every block and transaction that came before it in an externally observable fashion.
sorokod 5y ago
A good overview of CBDCs: https://www.adamseconomics.com/post/the-potential-orwellian-horror-of-central-bank-digital-currencies https://www.adamseconomics.com/post/the-potential-orwellian-...

51 points by NKosmatos 5y ago

The European Central Bank (ECB) has decided today to launch the investigation phase of a digital euro project lasting 24 months, noting that a digital euro would complement cash, not replace it.

rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
Stupid car analogy: Introducing spy cars with real time state captured GPS, remote control and killswitch and always on police surveillance (audio/video). We note that this will not replace horses.
RandomLensman 5y ago
Eventually cash will be considered suspicious for any transaction while the digital Euro would be transparent to law enforcement. This will happen slowly, with limits to cash transactions being lowered, larger denominations removed from circulation etc. On the transparency side it will again start out with praises sung to its privacy and then "stuff happens", i.e. cannot be that a digital Euro is good for criminals and terrorists...
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  See my other comment, it very much depends on how it's implemented, which hasn't been decided yet. If you're European, now is the time to write your MEPs about this. To make sure they understand we care about privacy. Realistically though, with the speed they're researching things I wouldn't be surprised if we have functioning blockchains offering all kinds of decentralized global banking services by the time they decided to launch anything at all.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- nicbou 5y ago
  You will never get Germans to switch away from cash.
  - endofreach 5y ago
    It will happen. Whenever I see the ÖRR (public broadcast) talk about cash lately, it is always mainly focused on how criminals use cash and it is used for money laundering & drug trafficking. There is even a podcast episode of the ÖRR with pro & contra of cash. The pro arguments are very weak, but the contra side is so strong, it is ridiculous. I don‘t like this direction. Germany is slowly developing into a surveillance state, but the worst thing: it‘s not dictated, a lot of people „want“ it that way. I guess it‘s not a surprise to anyone. Still good beer though

nabla9 5y ago

Note: Digital currency is not a synonym for cryptocurrency. In the context of central banks, it usually means that the same mechanisms that allow the banks access to central bank money are made available for other private businesses and individuals. Practical implementation can be crypto ledger or something else. It would just show in central bank balance sheet. If the central banks want to add money into the system, they could give it directly to the consumers (helicopter money), not to banks.

Lionga 5y ago
The reverse would be also true they can just take money as they like (e.g. negativ interest or simple one time reductions of consumer balances as it happened in Cyprus). Or just freeze all your assets. I for one fear even more control of the incompetent, ever money hungry governments
- iSnow 5y ago
  Cyprus wasn't the central bank and especially not the ECB, though.

Proven 5y ago

Excellent. They'll need that for "free shit"-style givaways such as equity-enhancing campaigns, fight against climate changes and socially beneficial spending and - eventually - Basic Income. As long as cross-referencing wallet owner's details doesn't uncover undesirable comments, group memberships and other red flags on social networks, of course. Let's take a look at the nonsense from the PR: > Our work aims to ensure that in the digital age citizens and firms continue to have access to the safest form of money, central bank money They have that today, it's called gold. They also can use central bank money through e-banking services that have been around 10-20 years. > A digital euro must be able to meet the needs of Europeans while at the same time helping to prevent illicit activities and avoiding any undesirable impact on financial stability and monetary policy. e-RMB, but Made in the EU. Nobody wants to use that crap, but many surely won't mind to receive freebies that way (and instantly convert them to cash, precious metals or crypto). > According to these experiments, a digital euro core infrastructure would be environmentally friendly: for the architectures that were tested, the power used to run tens of thousands of transactions per second is negligible compared with the energy consumption of crypto-assets such as bitcoin. That is funny. Almost no one uses Bitcoin for daily transactions. Those cryptos that are used for frequent transactions don't need to do "tens of thousands of transactions per second" - we can have ten of them, each catering to a different use case or audience and doing 5,000 tps, and avoid all the baggage that comes with this euro-shit-coin. How about you shut down the ECB and fire all the useless eaters employed over there, that's a lot of CO2, don't you think?

hcktntng 5y ago

It will probably be another typical EU design by committee disaster, like the cookie banner laws.

tux3 5y ago
The cookie laws have good intentions. They say that you don't have to put up a cookie banner, because you only use necessary cookies. Unless you're doing things that require consent, then you gotta ask or you gotta stop doing that.
hhhhhhiirirjff 5y ago
Or x400
mrtksn 5y ago
Better invest in PR then. For some reason people believe that EU is forcing developers to put cookie banners on websites.
- herbst 5y ago
  People should have noticed that these banners usually only show up on websites that heavily track their users. And most of the time they just redirect you away if you don't agree to the tracking. Honestly people just use an adblocker and don't trust weird banners
Barrin92 5y ago
that's not a design disaster, that's a company privacy disaster. The cookie laws just make transparent and explicit the amount of tracking that businesses engage in. The target of your criticism should not be the EU, it should be websites who put stumbling blocks into the user experience because they want to force you to consent to their data gathering. Compliance could be very simple without any cookie banners, just let the user opt-in and turn it off by default.
- bijant 5y ago
  In the best case a cookie banner gives me an opportunity to trust a site owner (not necessarily a company) that they won‘t use cookies to do invasive tracking I didn’t agree to. Oftentimes sites just straight up require consent to „necessary“ cookies in order to use the site at all. In these cases the EU imposed Cookie Banners don’t even give me the option to disable cookie based tracking. In other cases it takes minutes of my time to navigate the cookie banner to get the desired results. Why should I choose such an ineffective solution if there are superior technical solutions to the same problem such as privacy aware browsers or extensions that don’t require user trust in site owners compliance but stop cookie based tracking on a technical level ? The Cookie banner legislation actually did nothing at all for privacy, quite the opposite it made browsing the web in incognito mode much more annoying as you’re constantly forced to close cookie banners before beeing able to consume the actual on-site content. (Googles (coincidental?) Decision to disallow chrome extensions in incognito mode renders relevant anti-cookie-banner extensions useless)

ricardobeat 5y ago

Can someone more versed in this explain what the concept is? As far as I'm concerned the Euro is already digital, based on banks' ledgers. I haven't used a physical bank note in years.

pintxo 5y ago
> Both the Eurosystem TARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) and alternatives such as blockchain were proven capable of processing more than 40,000 transactions per second. The experiments also suggested that architectures combining centralised and decentralised elements are possible. Sounds like they are evaluating to make Bank accounts obsolete? Sidenotes: > Experiments were conducted in the four following areas: the digital euro ledger; privacy and anti-money laundering; limits on digital euro in circulation; end-user access while not connected to the internet and facilitating inclusiveness with appropriate devices. No major technical obstacles were identified to any of the assessed design options. I am interested to hear about a system providing privacy and anti-money-laundering capabilities at the same time. Aren't they mutually exclusive? > According to these experiments, a digital euro core infrastructure would be environmentally friendly: for the architectures that were tested, the power used to run tens of thousands of transactions per second is negligible compared with the energy consumption of crypto-assets such as bitcoin. Bitcoins power usage per transaction is outrageous, if they choose this as their benchmark, it sounds like their transactions are quite power hungry compared to the status quo?
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y ago
  It is only outrageous if you don't understand why we spend the energy on security. Decentralization is an expensive endeavor. Centralized solutions are generally cheaper in every way. Bitcoiners believe that energy is essential for the security of the chain, to ensure it is decentralized and censorship resistant. When and if you come to understand this, you see growing energy usage as a good thing, infact, the best thing. It is too simple to think of it as 'energy per tx', this is a bad metric, and illogical. One must consider the energy being used to secure every block and transaction that came before it in an externally observable fashion.

sorokod 5y ago

A good overview of CBDCs: https://www.adamseconomics.com/post/the-potential-orwellian-horror-of-central-bank-digital-currencies https://www.adamseconomics.com/post/the-potential-orwellian-...