Will Europe’s Digital Euro Really Protect Privacy?

You see, unlike Olejnik, I think CBCDs, if done right, could bring real economic value. I see the smart contract capabilities enabled by true peer-to-peer monetary settlement bringing new, society-wide efficiencies that bank-intermediated IOU money simply cannot. I continue to prefer a private sector-led stablecoin model and believe bitcoin and other native cryptocurrencies are critical to our financial future. But it’s simplistic to dismiss CBDCs as meaningless. Whether crypto people like it or not, CBDCs will bring the power of monetary programmability to the economy. (Bafflingly, the EC proposal would explicitly outlaw that value-added usage for a digital euro – which, again, prompts the question: what’s the point?)