It was reported that the digital euro (CBDC) is being developed with the ability to control user payments. Zero control for payments of €300-400 is being considered, but even that “could be dangerous.”
The fact that the digital euro would be used for “limited control” over retail payments of Europeans was announced by Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), in a prank call. It was a conversation with fake Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky published on March 15. But the crypto community paid attention to it only recently, after a snippet about CBDCs was published on Twitter.
Moreover, Lagarde said that the ECB was concerned about the dependence on currencies of unfriendly countries or currencies that create private corporations such as Facebook or Google. Thus, the President of the European Central Bank expressed her personal belief that the EU must develop a digital euro project in order to move forward.
This should also be facilitated by a “limited control” over the financial transactions of Europeans through the CBDC, despite their protests about it. A zero control mechanism for transfers of up to €400 is being considered, but even this could be dangerous because small anonymous transactions could finance terrorist attacks.
Snippets of the video of Christine Lagarde’s “revelations” circulated widely on Twitter and caused active criticism from the cryptocurrency community. However, some users found a positive side to this, as this kind of statement encourages the general public to use BTC and other cryptocurrencies. Coincidentally, a big report from the Cato Institute was published the day before, and its authors concluded that the use of CBDCs threatens the financial privacy and economic freedom of American citizens.
