ECB Board Member Believes CBDC Euro Will Grant More Privacy

An ECB Board member believes the CBDC euro will grant more privacy rather than the unstable coins such as the one provided by Facebook’s Diem so let’s read more in our latest cryptocurrency news today.

The Digital Euro will protect the consumers’ privacy because the European Central Bank has no commercial interest in the personal data as the ECB Board member believes. Fabio Panetta thinks that Diem is an unstable coin and believes that a digital euro will preserve privacy better than a stablecoin that is issued by a large tech company. He said:

“If the central bank gets involved in digital payments, privacy is going to be better protected […] because we are not like private companies. We have no commercial interest in storing, managing or monetising the data of users.”

A month ago, the Facebook-backed Diem Association stated that a pilot version of the stablecoin or a private digital currency pegged 1:1 to the fiat currency is on its way as Panetta described the Libra coin as an unstable coin as per the FT. By contrast, the ECB digital euro will be a central bank digital currency and it is still a tentative plan as per the ECB President Christine Lagarde and it will take at least four years. Working out on designing the coin, it will take up to two years.

The interview came two weeks as the ECB advised governments to pay more attention to central bank digital currencies. The ECB said that the government is still far away from CBDC’s risk of exposing their financial systems and the monetary autonomy to “foreign tech giants offering artificial currencies in the future” but the report never mentioned Diem. Panetta didn’t explain how the digital euro will protect privacy other than suggesting that the ECB will be as hungry for consumer data as a private company as he said:

 “The payment will go through, but nobody in the payment chain would have access to all the information.”

Unlike crypto assets, CBDC is not decentralized while the ECB surveyed the public about its CBDC plans and found out that half of the respondents believe that blockchain will deal with counterfeits and will resolve technical glitches.