G-d, how the hell is “mastercard and visa are monopolies” used as a reasoning for surveillance currency?
Have Danes been visiting ECB lately?
How is a digital euro a “surveillance currency”? Or rather, how is it worse than Visa and Mastercard?
This digital euro is specifically about having a single eminent control and track your money even at rest - something Visa and Mastercard would gladly sacrifices a population of a medium sized country to achieve.
It’s not worse than credit cards in that regard. But it’s not better either. It is worse than the physical Euro though.
It could and should be as anonymous as cryptos can be. Otherwise the EU / national governments can stop you from buying anything they deem illegal.
As an example imagine trying to buy something from your dealer with physical bills and coins vs the digital Euro.
The digital Euro is an alternative to other digital payment methods, nobody but conspiracy theorists is talking about abolishing physical cash.
With the lack of anonymity it’s still a bad alternative.
Cryptos are not anonymous. A currency based on an open publicly negotiated and independently verifiable transaction ledger is antithetical to anonymity.
I’m not sure they can stop you buying it, but they can see what you bought, or at least who got the money. While i do see your point, I’d rather have an European alternative to Visa today than the perfect digital euro in 10 years. Preventing crime is a responsibility of a nation state, so being able to track money flows is a feature, not a bug.
