The digital euro: Something Europe can’t afford to get wrong
To become a global digital leader, Europe needs a diverse and competitive digital ecosystem. Europe knows it will have to embrace a digital euro soon. To become a global digital leader and avoid dependence on American and Asian technological infrastructures, European policymakers and regulators have to make progressive decisions.A critical stumbling block for Europe’s digital economic thinking is so-called stablecoins. Stablecoins can be privately issued and have the potential to become globally accepted and systemically relevant, disrupting long-established financial systems.....
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Europe’s digital currency project has made some progress recently, with the Eurozone’s central bank moving to its next stage. Critics point, however, to the continuing lack of clarity around the design and purpose of the digital euro after a decade-long delay, if cryptocurrency is taken as a benchmark. Digital Euro to ‘Feel Like a Prepaid Card of Sorts’ A week after the European Central Bank (ECB) decided to proceed with its plan to create a digital version of the euro, experts have voiced concerns about its unclear future. On July 14, the Governing Council of the....
The decision on how to launch a digital euro could still be a long time coming. Financial authorities in Europe could form an investigation plan for a digital euro as early as next year, according to an executive at the European Central Bank.Holger Neuhaus, head of market innovation and integration division at the ECB, joined the Singapore FinTech Festival 2020 on Dec. 7 to discuss the global development of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.During the online discussion, Neuhaus claimed that the ECB expects European financial authorities to assess whether to launch a digital euro....
After months of deliberation, the European Central Bank has decided to proceed with a digital euro project. Officials insist the new version of Europe’s common currency should “ensure privacy” and provide access to “the safest form of money” at a “negligible” cost to the environment, in comparison with bitcoin. Eurosystem Initiates Digital Euro Project The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) took a long-awaited decision on Wednesday to launch the ‘investigation phase’ of a project to issue a central bank digital....
Back in August, Germany became the first country in the world to recognize Bitcoin as “private money.” Note this is not the same as legal tender. This, perhaps above all, is seen as legitimizing Bitcoin’s image worldwide, where prevailing narratives before mid-2013 or so focused on Silk Road and money launderers. In Germany itself, Bitcoin spenders and businesspeople are now free to engage in digital commerce without the fear that their activities put them on the wrong side of the law. But this designation has further implications in Germany and Europe. First, the currency’s decentralized....
The crypto world does not have a major euro-pegged stablecoin yet. A number of popular U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins exist on the crypto market. Stablecoins based on the euro also exist, but are notably less liquid, according to Zahreddine Touag, co-founder and head of trading at Paris-based market making firm Woorton.“There’s not any euro stablecoin that is very liquid,” Touag said on Thursday during a Paris Blockchain Week conference panel, noting multiple points of rationale. The most impactful reason: “It’s very costly to do a euro stablecoin,” he noted, adding:“The primary source of....