Anonymity Will Not Be Possible With The Digital Euro: ECB

Anonymity will not be possible with the Digital Euro so all the privacy-centric Europeans, should be worried. The European Central Bank opened up a discussion about the implementation of the digital euro so let’s find out more in our crypto news today.

The ECB published a 50-page report to learn about the prospects of launching a central bank digital currency. The member of the bank said that the organization will gather more views from the public and all of the interested stakeholders to get a better view of the situation. A part of the report shows that anonymity will not be possible with the digital euro. The ECB announced the necessity for the alpha bank to launch the digital euro mainly because of the increased demand for contactless payments and the digitalization.

Recently, Christina Lagarde, the president of the ECB said that the bank will move to launch a digital euro in order to respond to the rising demand for stable coins and central bank digital currencies since about 50 countries are making progress in this field, especially China. The executive member of the bank Fabio Panetta who was a head of the Italian central bank previously published a blog to introduce the latest reports of the bank and to see public opinion. According to Panetta, the bank will lose its financial stability or monetary sovereignty. While the report also considers decentralized control for the digital euro, it doesn’t uphold its eurozone spenders’ privacy rights.

The European Central Bank plans to give up on the anonymity features in order to comply with rules of anti-terrorism, money laundering, and other sanctions but also to stop the flow of excessive capital flight in the region. Comparing the digital euro with cash notes and coins, the report noted:

 “Regulations do not allow anonymity in electronic payments and the digital euro must in principle comply with such regulations.”

There were also two iterations of the digital euro proposed, one offline and one online. The online version will “exclude the possibility of anonymity for users.” The offline one will be anonymous but the report said that this version will be limited. The clear statements about the privacy functions are concerning for a lot of people but what will happen exactly remains to be seen.