The Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), the governing political body in Spain, is backing a new national digital currency initiative. PSOE, Spain’s oldest active party and the leading force in the Congress of Deputies, has introduced a non-law proposition to launch a national digital currency in response to the ongoing decline in cash usage, local news agency El Economista reported Monday. The party noted that the proposition comes in response to the European Central Bank’s experiments with a digital euro. Carlos Conesa, general director of the financial innovation division at the Spanish Central Bank, recently said that “the decision to …

An executive at major Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) has raised concerns about the digital euro and questioned what customer demand it would meet. Pablo Urbiola of BBVA’s digital regulation team has called on European financial authorities to carefully explore the possible issuance of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Urbiola said Friday at a European Banking Federation seminar that, despite the increasing need for a European CBDC, it is not yet exactly clear what kind of customer demand the digital euro is supposed to meet: “Considering all the innovation that is taking place in the payments market, …

European Central Bank (ECB) executive board member, Fabio Panetta, has argued that a digital euro offers superior privacy protections than privately issued stablecoins. Panetta criticized the profit motive of private firms, emphasizing it is in their commercial interests to harvest masses of data on their users. “We are not like private companies,” the board member told Financial Times. “We have no commercial interest in storing, managing, or monetizing the data of users.” The ECB official also confirmed that the European Central Bank has carried out pilots testing “offline payments for small amounts, in which no data is recorded outside the …

Analysts at thAmerican multinational investment bank Morgan Stanley have estimated the likely changes in eurozone banks’ deposits should a digital euro be widely adopted. According to the analysts, a European Union central bank digital currency (CBDC) could suck up 8% of customer deposits from eurozone banks, Reuters reported Wednesday. This share may be far higher in smaller countries like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Greece, they said. The analysts’ estimates were based on a “bear case” scenario in which all eurozone citizens over the age of 15 sent 3,000 euros ($3,637) into a digital euro wallet controlled by the …

“Proof of work is proof of burning,” is fast becoming the dominant view of Bitcoin (BTC) among those who are serious about tackling the climate crisis. The words are from a United Kingdom government representative for this year's COP26 UN climate talks, cited this week in the Financial Times. The same article indicates that climate campaigning groups — who have, until now, been slow to take a firm line against Proof-of-Work cryptocurrencies — are catching up and becoming more aware of the climate risks involved. Greenpeace, which set up a facility for accepting Bitcoin donations back in 2014, is now …

Luis de Guindos, vice president of the European Central Bank, has dismissed the value proposition of cryptocurrencies as investment assets. Speaking to Bloomberg TV, the ECB vice president remarked that crypto should not be seen as a real investment. “When you have difficulties to find out what are the real fundamentals of an investment, then what you’re doing is not a real investment,” de Guindos argued, adding: “This is an asset with very weak fundamentals, and that is going to be subject to a lot of volatility.” According to de Guindos, the current market drawdown is not different from the …

When European Central Bank board member Fabio Panetta addressed the European Union Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs in April, he emphasized the importance of privacy in any potential future CBDC rollout. The ECB had conducted a public consultation on the possibility of a digital euro, canvassing the opinions of over 8,000 individuals and businesses. The responses that came back suggested privacy was the number one concern surrounding the issuance of a central bank digital currency. With 43% of respondents highlighting privacy as the core requirement, Panetta declared that the digital euro could meet those requirements without relaxing security standards. …

As central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs, continue to garner mainstream traction across the global financial landscape in recent years, almost all central banks are actively researching the benefits and risks of offering a digital currency to the public. In its most basic sense, a CBDC is a digital form of fiat money, backed by a suitable amount of monetary reserves like gold or foreign currency reserves. Each CBDC unit acts as a secure digital instrument equivalent and can be used as a way of payment, a store of value and an official unit of account. What distinguishes them from …

The European Central Bank will put itself in jeopardy if it waits around o a digital euro for too long, according to an executive at major cryptocurrency firm ConsenSys. ConsenSys South Africa lead Monica Singer joined the European Blockchain Convention to discuss the role of the private sector in shaping global central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. She spoke of CBDC-powered benefits and opportunities in a Monday panel with BNP Paribas CIB digital transformation leader Dean Demellweek and Philipp Sandner, a professor at the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center. Singer — who served more than 18 years as CEO of South …

The European Central Bank has published the results of a public consultation on a potential digital euro as the institution inches closer to deciding whether to formally study such an initiative. According to a Wednesday announcement, the ECB received more than 8,200 responses to its public digital euro consultation — a personal record for the bank regarding participation in a public consultation. Of the total responses, 47% came from Germany, with a significant amount also coming from Italy and France, accounting for 15% and 11% of total responses, respectively. The majority of respondents said that privacy was the most desired …

It could be a while before European Union gets a central bank digital currency, if it gets one at all. In a Wednesday interview with Bloomberg Television, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde laid out the complex decision-making process with which the bank will determine the future of a digital euro. The ECB will soon release its analysis of eight thousand responses received from its digital euro consultation process. “That will be communicated to the European Parliament which is one of the key players as well as the Commission and the Council with which we operate,” she stated. Based on …

The European Central Bank has finally sent its formal opinion on crypto regulations to the European Commission. According to Reuters, the ECB has asked EU lawmakers for veto powers concerning private stablecoin projects like the Facebook-backed Diem. An excerpt from the ECB opinion document reads: “Where an asset-reference arrangement is tantamount to a payment system or scheme, the assessment of the potential threat to the conduct of monetary policy, and to the smooth operation of payment systems, should fall within the exclusive competence of the ECB.” As part of the demand for veto powers on stablecoins, the ECB has urged …