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EU to start with a "Digital Euro" within 5 years

tikker
By tikker
in Tech News
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Posted
16 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

In the event of societal collapse, if you want to hold onto wealth you need precious metals, or if you have the space maybe fine art. In the short term what you'll probably want is goods you can barter with and ideally tools and access to agricultural land.

 

Actually no!  Precious metals will also be more or less useless if a societal collapse.  Thinks like cows, chickens (egg) is what you will trade with, or you trade labour for food.  Just look how things where traded in worst parts of Europe during WW2, no matter if you had a ton of gold you could not buy food because.

 

Some what comical but still valid point in this video:

 

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2 hours ago, Kroon said:

 

Actually no!  Precious metals will also be more or less useless if a societal collapse.  Thinks like cows, chickens (egg) is what you will trade with, or you trade labour for food.  Just look how things where traded in worst parts of Europe during WW2, no matter if you had a ton of gold you could not buy food because.

 

Some what comical but still valid point in this video:

 

They would regain their value as you came out the other side because humans love shiny stuff. I conceded it will be worth little if people are struggling to feed themselves.

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16 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

They would regain their value as you came out the other side because humans love shiny stuff. I conceded it will be worth little if people are struggling to feed themselves.

What makes gold valuable is it will do things other metals can’t.  One of the big ones is it doesn’t corrode at all.  There’s also the total ductility the ease of working,  the terrific conductivity.  It’s just the best metal for a whole bunch of different things.  If there was more gold in the world copper wouldn’t even really be used for much and would be considered a weird metal like bismuth.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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22 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

They would regain their value as you came out the other side because humans love shiny stuff.

 

That is IF you still have the gold and your life when things calm down.  I have several stories from Denmark during WW2 where rich families tried to buy food from farmers with their jewellery without success. Farmers was simply not interested, they had no use for it.  Then rumor about the gold spread and German troops come and looted your home.  So in the end you where without your gold and/or dead.

 

My grandfather told a lot of stories about things like that.  He was farmhand in Denmark during WW2 and his only regret in life was that he did't become a blacksmith because they was the ones that always had a good meal in the table.

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2 minutes ago, Kroon said:

 

That is IF you still have the gold and your life when things calm down.  I have several stories from Denmark during WW2 where rich families tried to buy food from farmers with their jewellery without success. Farmers was simply not interested, they had no use for it.  Then rumor about the gold spread and German troops come and looted your home.  So in the end you where without your gold and/or dead.

 

My grandfather told a lot of stories about things like that.  He was farmhand in Denmark during WW2 and his only regret in life was that he did't become a blacksmith because they was the ones that always had a good meal in the table.

I recall. The standard unit of barter at the end of world war 2 was cigarettes

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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10 hours ago, tikker said:

I thought it was clear, but I guess I should have added /s to that first sentence as it was more a joke.

 

Maybe I should have been a bit more specific. With backed I refer to the value aspect. Fiat money is not backed by anything in the sense that there is no gold or other valuable material tied to it. Its value comes from it being legal tender.

 

Money in the bank is legal tender as well...

The money in the bank is always in the form of a fiat currency. If I have 10000 dollars in my bank account that is USD and therefore a fait currency and legal tender by extention. I can use the money in the bank for basically all purchases and can be used as legal tender in that sense as well without having to withdraw paper currency. 

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28 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Money in the bank is legal tender as well...

The money in the bank is always in the form of a fiat currency. If I have 10000 dollars in my bank account that is USD and therefore a fait currency and legal tender by extention. I can use the money in the bank for basically all purchases and can be used as legal tender in that sense as well without having to withdraw paper currency. 

If you have money in a US bank you can demand it as cash and it is automatically insured.

Not a pro, not even very good.  I’m just old and have time currently.  Assuming I know a lot about computers can be a mistake.

 

Life is like a bowl of chocolates: there are all these little crinkly paper cups everywhere.

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On 3/1/2021 at 7:28 PM, tikker said:

Not sure if it completely fits TN. Happy to see it moved elsewhere if not.

 

Summary

The European Central Bank is joining the digital currency party by developing a digital version of the Euro. Two weeks ago it was reported that it aims to start issueing it within the next five years. It will coexist along the Euro we're used to, is not a cryptocurrency and is only intended to become an easy and secure method for online payments.

 

"The euro belongs to Europeans and we are its guardian. We should be prepared to issue a digital euro, should the need arise." -- the ECB

 

Quotes

 

 

 

 

 

My thoughts

Governments are scared of crypto, they just want to (re)acquire and retain control and are planning to do so by introducing their own crypto-but-it's-not-crypto currency. They even mention blockchain as a strategy being investigated. I'm happy to be convinced otherwise, but I don't see an advantage to this currency with or without crypto. Apparently the money in our banks is not a digital Euro? This feels like something that could/should have been a "backend fix" to update the banking infrastructure to modern standards. As for ease of use I think this will just confuse people in the end or at least be not user friendly, especially with the way they are describing it. According to WallstreetItalia it seems to be intended only for payments:

So to use this "Digital Euro" I would first have to deposit it into an electronic wallet/account at the ECB and then pay from there. Simultaneously I'm not supposed to store funds there long term or use it for things other than payments, as that would compete with existing banks.

 

Secondly there is the point of privacy. I'm not up to spec with how much privacy we really have with private banks at the moment, I'm guessing very little, but this digital euro seems to the usual joke in that regard. Excessive capital flow will already trigger the bank to contact you or authorities. They try to make privacy a selling point, but based on the Ledger Insights article they have no way to actually offer privacy and I see little reason to trust them over a local bank.

 

They attempt to explain why a digital euro would be better than crypto:

Privacy is basically out the window already and stablecoins are already made to track the dollar or whatever. Won't the digital euro be just a glorified stablecoin? Tether is already considered shady as people are mostly sure they don't have the actual fiat to back their supply. What will back the digital Euro, dollar, whatever? Again I see no difference between this digital money and my bank account telling me I have 5 currency units available.

 

Finally, the digital Euro offers little to no privacy (although the same can be argued for a number of crypto), because regulations don't allow for that, it's all centralised and they need to maintain the ability to exercise control over your assets or account. In other words exactly what the crypto sphere doesn't want in a currency. Cryptoenthusiasts already dislike coins where the developer has/controls the majority of coins. Why would they want the government to be that?

 

I realise I maybe compared it to crypto too much, but I can't help but see the overlap.

 

Sources

Official page: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/digital_euro/html/index.en.html

https://www.wallstreetitalia.com/euro-digitale-al-via-entro-cinque-anni-tetto-massimo-di-3-mila-euro/

https://www.ledgerinsights.com/eurosystem-digital-euro-currency-cbdc-project-by-mid-2021/

https://techxplore.com/news/2021-01-digital-euro-years-lagarde.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerhuang/2021/01/14/ecb-pushes-digital-euro-wants-to-globally-regulate-bitcoins-funny-business/

 

So basically a euro stablecoin?

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Thread locked. Like always there's the few that ruin discussions by jamming their political opinions in to everything and those arguing.

 

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