Re: The Digital EURO Wallet

In political circles it is all about the name-dropping; nobody in their right mind will think for a second the EU will let a US company take care of e-commerce payments… This announcement is shorthand for “we’re busy figuring out winter, so we’re gonna start this high profile thing that runs into 2023 when we regroup”. In their own words “There are no plans to re-use the prototypes in the subsequent phases of the digital euro project.”

To your point Anders, yes and no; wholesale Central Bank money (reserves) have been digital since the 80s. Wholesale CBDC is (mostly) about the architecture and automating cross-border and/or cross-currency flows. This is why most efforts are on multi-currency, multi-jurisdiction pilots (m-bridge<https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/cbdc/mcbdc_bridge.htm>).

Retail central bank currency (known as cash in the form of banknotes and coins) on the other hand is a different beast. It needs to be p2p, work offline and on lowtech: the delicate tension here is one where if on-ledger and traceable, people won’t use it. If fully anonymous, CBs won’t issue it. Figuring out how to solve this has been the labor of love of many technologists over the past 40 odd years (cypherpunks long dreamed of global electronic money) – now CBs wish to adopt some, as software has taken over the world.

Back to your point and the report – the Digital Euro Association is accomplice in this mis/re-direct: imho, wallets will be an OS play and policies will seek to inflict interoperability upon them but not really compete with them.

Anywho – Central Bankers are a funny bunch akin to marathon runners, each trying to be at the forefront but not ahead of the pack. Inversely, those to run ahead often suffer the finger-waving of the collective (ECCB was almost cut off SWIFT, only to later receive this “recommendation<https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2022/06/02/mcs060222-eccu-imf-staff-concluding-statement-of-2022-art-iv-consultation-on-common-policies>”).

Cheers,
Kalin

From: Anders Rundgren <anders.rundgren.net@gmail.com>
Date: Thursday, 22 September 2022 at 14:24
To: W3C Credentials Community Group <public-credentials@w3.org>
Subject: The Digital EURO Wallet
https://www.ecb.europa.eu/paym/intro/news/html/ecb.mipnews220916.en.html

I thought the architecture was the thing with CBDC...

Anders