The launch of the digital euro could give every European a free, universal payment account. But this grand vision is at risk of being curtailed by a well-coordinated lobbying campaign of the banking industry. Banks want to make sure you will keep needing them – and they have EU officials’ ears.
The launch of the digital euro could give every European a free, universal payment account. But this grand vision is at risk of being curtailed by a well-coordinated lobbying campaign of the banking industry. Banks want to make sure you will keep needing them – and they have EU officials’ ears.
VISA will be the main driver to protect the old system where they control the network and the mechants-fees. That is what makes them money. Billions years over years.
The Podcast "Aquired" has a 3h long podcast that tells the crazy story of VISA, its founder and how they came to control the market. If anyone will do anything in its power to not liberalize the payment landscape, then it will be this very Company. It will go thermonuclear on their revenue stream.
“If [the] digital Euro can also be used for tax payments etc and general acceptance is mandated, a significant amount of their clients could do their full finances with the digital Euro and won’t need an account with a commercial bank anymore,” German cooperative bank lobbyists warned the Commission in one of the documents.
Imagine "warning" them that their idea could have the desired effect!
I always thought that commercial banking and the transfer industry will basically lose their whole raison d'être if we ever get CBDCs working, and I didn't understand if they had any plans for it. I guess not.
There's a catch here. Large amount of AML regulations imposed on banks is an indirect form of taxation, even if it wasn't the original goal. Banks have to do bulk of investigative work that makes sense to do there. To do that they have to employ crapload of people (in Poland, Hungary, Estonia etc). I'm not sure individual governments or EU want to get into that because they could turn out to be less competitive than private sector which has no qualms with outsourcing / offshoring as much as possible.
Don't fall for CBDCs, they're FIAT 2.0,
but now with even less rights over your money and privacy, and as likely to lead to hyper inflation as our current FIAT systems.
I don't want a volatile currency as my main currency. Also, I think PoW isn't the way to go anymore.
A digital PoS "Monero" (Cryptonote, etc.) stablecoin is what I was thinking about.
The only thing anyone is scared about with Bitcoin is that it will burn so much energy that it will accelerate climate change. As a currency it failed years ago in case you haven't noticed.