After the European Central Bank (ECB) completed the consultation stage on the development of the digital euro, from today it enters the research phase of the project for 24 months.
This assertion is clear from a statement that the financial institution published on its website on July 14, 2021. According to the press release, this period it will serve to address the issue of a design based on the preferences of both users as traders and intermediaries.
The decision was taken during the Governing Council of the European Central Bank where the head of the institution, Christine Lagarde, spoke, who commented in a broader way the following:
A digital euro must be able to meet the needs of Europeans and, at the same time, help prevent illicit activities and avoid any undesirable impact on financial stability and monetary policy. In any case, euro digital would complement cash, not replace it.
Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank.
The executive clarified that the aim of this work is to ensure that, during the digital age, both citizens and businesses continue to have access to the safest form of money which, in his opinion, is that issued by the central banks
ECB assessed the impact of the euro on the market
According to the press release, another important aspect that will be addressed during this process is to analyze the the effect of the digital euro on the market. Design alternatives will be considered to, in this way, certify privacy and prevent risks for citizens and intermediaries who make their lives in the Eurozone, as well as in the local economy.
The publication makes a point about intermediaries (financial sector), noting that for they will design a business model. A market advisory corporation will also be responsible for taking into account the opinions expressed by both users and distributors on the feasibility of a digital euro.
The statement explains that this stage of investigation, which will last two more years, will informed by the testing work carried out by the ECB and the national central banks of the Euro Area for the last nine months. Participants included representatives from the academic and private sectors.
In that period tests were carried out in the following four areas: the digital ledger in euros; privacy and anti-money laundering; limits of the digital euro in circulation; and end-user access while not connected to the internet along with the inclusion of appropriate devices. The ECB concluded during this test that ‘no significant technical barriers were identified for any of the design options assessed’.
ECB questions bitcoin’s alleged high energy consumption
Finally, this publication of the European Central Bank lashes out at bitcoin (BTC) for the opinion matrix that has been created around its high energy consumption. Specifically, it says the following:
According to these experiments, a central euro digital infrastructure would be environmentally friendly: for the architectures that were tested, the energy used to execute tens of thousands of transactions per second is negligible compared to the energy consumption of cryptoassets like bitcoin.
European Central Bank.
The ECB publication appears to ignore the report recently published by the University of Cambridge, USA. This document, reviewed by CriptoNoticias assured, in early July 2021, that bitcoin’s electricity consumption was reduced by a 60% in less than two months, reaching October 2020 levels.
Research it showed on that occasion that bitcoin reached to consume 67 terawatt-hours (TWh), while last May came to consume 141 TWh, the largest electricity consumption in the history of the most popular cryptocurrency in the ecosystem.