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> The digital euro would be like euro banknotes, but digital.

Except you own paper euro and it's state or bank who owns "your" digital euro.

This is absurd FUD.

"You don't own your house, it's just the government that grants you property rights, they could change their mind at any time!11!!1!"

A digital euro, if it ever happens at all, would be created with the same rules as euro proper (the vast majority of "paper" euro is actually digital, and put into general circulation as the ECB purchases securities at digital auctions), which makes it a different way to keep track of transactions, rather than a different currency.

Tell that to sanctioned entities like Russia. If they owned actual paper bills they could still use their money.
1) This is the weirdest response ever, that Russia and similar terrorist organizations are under economic sanctions is a feature and not a bug.

2) No, they couldn't. Sanctions prohibit trading and investing, and freeze physical assets. The method of payment is irrelevant.

3) The logical conclusion of your argument is that we should abandon banking at all: money being digital is an implementation detail, banks would create money even if they resolved transactions on paper ledgers. Is your ideal world one with no financial services at all? I hope you're good at NP-hard problems, because that's what's going to happen when you go buy groceries in that world.

1) I am just pointing out that physical != digital as you implied, whether sanctions are a feature or a bug is irrelevant.

2) Yes they could, because only some countries sanctioned Russia in my example, however their digital dollars were frozen. Russia could still trade with China or India using physical dollars if that’s what they were holding but they are unable to do it now because their digital dollars are frozen.

> I am just pointing out that physical != digital as you implied

It is though. The same would have happened had the bank resolved transactions on a paper ledger. The only alternative is if we don't do banking at all, which isn't really feasible.

> This is absurd FUD.

This has already happened. Justin Trudeau terrorized peaceful protesters with threats of blocking their money in Canada's banks.

Will you try to me convince me he'd even make the same threat about their physical money? That he would be able to block even 1% of physical money in time and effort it takes to block 100% of bank accounts?

Maybe you'll tell me that people "sanctioned" by this man would be refused service at stores with their physical money?

Deprivation of analog money is modern slavery and current Canada's PM was the first leader of western country with morality so low or stupidity so enormous (it's plausible it's both), to go public with this. You can call it FUD or however you like.

Full text of that page:

A digital euro

The digital euro would be like euro banknotes, but digital. It would be an electronic form of money, issued by the Eurosystem (the ECB and the national central banks of the euro area), and would be accessible to all citizens and firms.

A digital euro would not replace cash, but rather complement it. A digital euro would give people an additional choice about how to pay and make it easier to do so, contributing to accessibility and inclusion.

One wonders for what reason this page exists at all—other than to ensure us our leaders are keenly aware of the unquestionable necessity in this age and day to write DIGITAL in capital letters all over the place.

No '/s' I mean it, these are people who rip out perfectly functioning systems that have been in place for many decades only to replace them with more crappy, more vulnerable but at-least-hey-it's-DIGITAL systems.

Our train networks used to have people everywhere, on the yards, in the signal boxes. Signals were controlled electrically, and in many cases, mechanically with pull wires. Now it's no-man's land, centrally controlled. One could've added digital to the mix as an additional safeguard. But no that would've meant to employ people and obviously, we can't have that. We must do everything in a centralized way with as many staff as possible, because centralized systems with single points of failure hooked up to the internet and responding to RF signals are inherently much safer than analogue, distributed systems. I mean, obviously, right?

At least in this case, they seemingly do the right thing by assuring us that the digital Euro would complement, not replace cash. That said, there's an ungood tendency already of politicians to call for the abandonment of cash because it's so archaic and of course that we can now do much better, with computers. Right, until the network or the grid is down. As long as they're not, we already have digital ways to pay and transfer money, so one wonders what an expressly 'digital Euro' would add to the mix.

A big step forward towards Klaus Schwab's Great Reset, "You will own nothing and you will be happy". Who will be owner, then ? Will we be happy ?

Kudos to George Orwell and Edward Bernays

>> A digital euro would allow people to make payments without sharing their data with third parties, other than what is required to prevent illicit activities.

Lol what double speak: in order to prevent illicit activites you need to know WHO is doing them: that by definition means that you must know WHO I am.

And in order to prevent illicit activities this must mean that they must have a way to BLOCK transactions: which means the govermnemt can block ANY transaction it wishes as soon as just ONE bad actor comes to power.

Horrible.

I don't know if it's related (but the goal is clearly the same : more transparency and state agency over money exchanges, probably genuine side bonus : less paperwork for everyone ) but France is currently rolling out mandatory digital invoicing.

Today when producing/receiving a bill (wish is mandatory and heavily regulated) either paper or digital form, you 'only' have it recorded and communicated to governement by your accountant.

very soon for all b2b related transaction, you will go through an official app and record directly on a state controlled database.

Related 'random' articles in english (I only have 'really' read official french ones) about it for background :

- https://edicomgroup.com/blog/status-of-b2b-electronic-invoic... - https://www.storecove.com/blog/en/mandatory-e-invoicing-in-f...

But where is the BLOCKCHAIN?!

Anyhow, I wonder what problem does this actually solve. Almost all the money I spend is spent cash-less. Does this somehow allow to bypass Visa/Mastercard and thus be cheaper for merchant? What is the difference between digital euro and "paper cash"/normal euro in my account, being spent via card payments or wire transfers?

Solves the transmission of negative interest rates to all cash holders, not necessarily only to deposits. IF they ever chose to do so.
As much as this sounds unnecessary at first glance I wonder if this also means we could establish a Europe wide payment system alternative to visa and master that doesn't come with all the stupid rules that feel so far fetched in a European society. And all the security nightmares credit cards come with.
This doesn't really compare to any other online payment standard? You still have to manually do a payment, afaik even copy and paste (or scan) a classic bill format.

I mean something along credit card, PayPal, crypto. Simple, fast, direct.

In Switzerland we just roll out QR bills that simplify the wire transfer process a lot. But it's just a layer over wire transfer basically. We also have 'Twint' that is an already established payment method instantly and also based on scanning qr codes (or touching payment bacons, or a phone number for private use)

> all the stupid rules that feel so far fetched in a European society. And all the security nightmares credit cards come with.

Those rules are written by the EU and then implemented by visa and master. If we cut out visa and mastercard we won't be cutting out the clowns causing problems but handing the whole system over to them.

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDTs) are a really bad idea. Think Big Brother on Steroids - every single Currency Unit would have it's own identity that could be easily tracked and controlled by a central authority. See my blog post for more info on this and much more about money.

https://www.onedb.online/blog/what_is_money

This is good for Bitcoin.
How is this any different from storing all of your euros in a bank and using a credit card to pay for everything? What new feature do you get from using Crypto? What new control does the government get? Do they intend to phase out physical currency?