Re: [Taler] E-Euro

[Christian Grothoff]

Hi davidak,

The Taler core team is quite aware of the Digital Euro discussion, and
have been participating in it for years -- in fact the ECB contacted us
in 2018 with questions about GNU Taler. Since, we have had quite a few
discussions with various central banks, and talked to a lot of very
smart people with sometimes rather interesting political constraints in
terms of what they are allowed to say publicly. The feedback on our
proposal for a Digital Euro / CBDC [1] was AFAIK universally positive.
We also participated in the ECB's public consultation by submitting a
statement. After the consultation revealed how offline-focused they are,
we also send them this article [2] with the goal of pointing out that
hardware-based security can sometimes be broken and can be rather
expensive to fix.

On the commercial side, we have also presented Taler at banking industry
events (FS-ISAC), and we have also had discussions with commercial
banks, none of which we are allowed to talk about in public yet.

All that said, even if the ECB decides to deploy a Digital Euro without
Taler, there is no point in giving up: there are other central banks we
are talking to, commercial payment systems can co-exist with CBDC, and
finally the Digital Euro of the ECB could always be a failure
(especially if they use unsuitable technology).

Nevertheless, I encourage everyone to politely make noise about GNU
Taler's suitability for the Digital Euro. Popular support cannot hurt.
When customers tell their banks or voters their elected officials what
they would like, their voices have much more weight then if some sales
person makes the same pitch ;-).

Happy hacking!

Christian

[1] https://taler.net/papers/cbdc2021en.pdf
[2] https://taler.net/en/news/2021-03.html

On 4/14/21 8:57 PM, David Kleuker wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> the european central bank (EZB) will decide "mid year" (so in about 1
> month) if they will create the E-Euro.
> 
> The president already said in january that the E-Euro will come. (they
> can't decide that alone)
> 
> https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/ezb-digitaler-euro-101.html (german)
> 
> Have you take part in the discussion? Are you in contact with EZB and
> european banks? Have you attended a banking congress or some industry
> event to reach all european banks?
> 
> Privacy is the most important concern of the european people (a survey
> showed) and banks don't want a central solution at the EZB, so your
> project would be perfect here, but probably no one knows it exist.
> 
> When the E-Euro is decided, i guess you can close the project. That
> would be very sad!
> 
> kind regards
> davidak