Fabio Panetta, an executive board member of the European Central Bank, or ECB, has said that a digital euro could come within four years, potentially designed with a person-to-person payment solution. In a Monday speech at the National College of Ireland, Panetta said the ECB could start the development and testing of solutions toward providing a digital euro for members of the European Union in 2023, a phase that could take up to three years. He added that making the digital currency legal tender and for use in P2P payments could help promote adoption. Panetta also commented on the recent …

The European Central Bank (ECB) continues pushing its central bank digital currency (CBDC) project despite Europeans apparently not feeling too positive about a digital euro. The ECB released another working paper on the digital euro, providing an extensive technical analysis of a potential European CBDC and its position in the existing financial system. Issued on May 13, the working paper aims to study issues like financial intermediation, payment choices and privacy in the digital economy, providing a large number of related algebra-based conclusions. The study suggests that a “CBDC with anonymity” is preferable to traditional digital payments like bank deposits …

Next to the fears of government overreach that the European Union’s ambitious digital euro project stirred, the main concern of the public is the prospective currency’s privacy framework. It appears that this worry might not be overblown after all, as the European Central Bank’s (ECB) latest presentation hints that user anonymity is not a desirable design option. On Tuesday, crypto venture adviser and European digital asset regulation whistleblower Patrick Hansen drew public attention to the ECB’s presentation titled “Digital Euro Privacy options.” The document is relatively short and contains nine slides that lay out the possible options for user privacy …

Progress will continue on the development of the digital euro as the European Central Bank (ECB) and Eurosystem have begun looking for companies to participate in an exercise to prototype customer-facing payments services. Payment service providers, banks and other relevant companies were invited to express interest in the project in an announcement released Thursday. Eurosystem, which comprises the ECB and the national central banks of countries that use the euro, stated that it will select up to five front-end providers on the basis of their capabilities and the use cases they present. While participants are not required to have previous …

European Central Bank executive board member Fabio Panetta said lawmakers across the world must decide how to regulate cryptocurrencies based on potential risks. In a written statement for a speech to Columbia University on Monday, Panetta said global policymakers had made some progress in addressing regulatory frameworks on digital assets, but “not swiftly enough to keep pace with the emerging challenges.” According to the ECB official, the world needs crypto regulated based on Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism rules of the Financial Action Task Force, strengthening public disclosure and reporting on regulatory compliance from the industry, and …

In the less than two weeks since the European Commission opened its “Digital euro for the EU” initiative up to public consultation, more than 11,000 individuals and organizations have left their feedback on the website. The feedback section will be open until June 14. Besides the open-ended comments section on the website, there is a targeted consultation questionnaire that aims to collect information from the industry representatives, authorities and experts regarding such aspects of the prospective digital euro as privacy and data protection, Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combatting the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) rules, the impact on financial stability and …

European Central Bank executive board member Fabio Panetta provided an overview of the central bank’s current research on a retail central bank digital currency Friday when he spoke at the IESE Business School Banking Initiative Conference on Technology and Finance. Panetta said the issuance of central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, is “likely to become a necessity,” but warned that “they should not become a source of financial disruption that could impair the transmission of monetary policy in the euro area.” A key to maintaining financial stability during the introduction of digital currency, Panetta said, would be to give commercial …

Fabio Panetta, executive board member of the European Central Bank, said focus groups exploring the potential rollout of a digital euro hinted the ability to use the digital currency at online and physical stores could be a key feature. In a written statement released Wednesday, Panetta broke down the findings of ECB focus groups on digital payment methods commissioned in September 2021, which suggested people were more likely to accept a digital euro accepted in physical and online stores and allowed easy person-to-person payments. According to Panetta, all merchants would need to accept a digital euro to see adoption trends …

Bitcoin (BTC) threatened a significant retracement overnight into March 23 as weekly highs saw their first test. BTC misses out on "very bullish" daily close Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView showed BTC/USD dipping from a peak of $43,337 to lows of $41,779 on Bitstamp before recovering. At the time of writing, the pair traded at around $42,300 — still $1,000 off the highs. Enthusiasm had been clearly in evidence on Tuesday thanks to increasing publicity focused on Blockchain protocol Terra's apparent $3 billion BTC buy-in. According to co-founder Do Kwon, the majority of the funds, which were to …

Experts on crypto policy argue that concerns expressed by high profile politicians about Russia evading economic sanctions using cryptocurrency are “totally unfounded.” They say the crypto market is not nearly large enough nor deep enough to support the volume that Russia needs and that the country’s digital asset infrastructure is minimal. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the current President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde are among the high profile figures concerned that cryptocurrency could provide the means for Russia to bypass severe financial sanctions imposed for its invasion of Ukraine. The country has been mostly …

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), has called on lawmakers to approve a regulatory framework on crypto, hinting at potentially preventing Russia from getting around economic sanctions. Speaking to reporters at an informal meeting of economics and finance ministers on Friday, Lagarde said the European Central Bank would be “decisively and rigorously” implementing sanctions on Russia imposed by European lawmakers in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine. In response to a question on Russia potentially using crypto to evade some of these measures, the ECB president urged action on an existing proposal for a regulatory framework …

Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said all cryptocurrencies, including stablecoins and speculative assets, “are not currencies at all.” In a Sept. 1 interview with World Economic Forum founder and executive chair Klaus Schwab, Lagarde said cryptocurrencies “present themselves as currencies,” but she still considered them as assets to be regulated and “supervised by asset regulators.” Under this definition, the ECB president claimed fiat-pegged digital currencies were also considered assets. “Stablecoins are pretending to be a coin, but in fact it’s completely associated with an actual currency,” said Lagarde. “For instance, some of them are saying that …