Digital euro will complement cash, not replace it

I think it is supposed to be untracable in the same way cash is. It's even supposed to be usable offline.
Whether or not they will accomplish this is yet to be seen.

I think it is supposed to be untracable in the same way cash is.

If you want something like that, take a look at GNU Taler. https://www.taler.net

It’s even supposed to be usable offline.

That doesn't make it more privately friendly. After all, you need a way to attest that the payment has actually happened, and that the money was valid, which is much harder (or impossible) to do in a privacy-guaranteeing way without a central authority (like servers from the ECB).

Even if all states in the EU are friendly and don't use our data for evil things, or block us from paying due to invalid reasons, a payment system without privacy by design is still not ok. By implementing such a payment system, the EU supports similar systems being used in suppressive governments, as those can then use the EU doing the same as justification. And, of course, there's no guarantee that the whole EU would stay 100% friendly.

Right? Currently, the most accepted payment Systems are under the control of us companies. Having a European alternative (even a shitty one) would not be the worst thing.

If you mean German EC cards, afaik they mostly don't work outside Germany.
And most Credit and Debit cards today are operated by either Visa or Mastercard, two American companies.
I think one of the main purposes of the digital Euro is to counter that monopoly.

I mean for one you're not actually transferring Euros when you use your EC card, or use your bank account in general: You're using Bank Euros, which the bank promises it can back with ECB Euros but if you look at its balance sheets then it will have too few ECB Euros to back everything because that's what fractional reserve banking means: If you put 100 ECB Euro on your bank account your bank has to deposit one ECB Euro with the ECB, it can do whatever (within the law) with the rest. Like depositing a further 50 ECB Euros with the ECB and adding 5000 Bank Euros to your account and calling it a credit.

Coins and notes are actual ECB Euros, the real deal, no ordinary banks involved. The digital Euro allows that kind of immediacy also in, well, the digital space.

It may just stand on its own, or it might be an ingredient in full reserve banking down the line. In particular it would allow the ECB to increase and decrease monetary supply very freely without having to rely on the whims of other banks, that was especially an issue in the financial crisis where no matter how cheap the ECB was lending out money to the banks, they wouldn't use it to give loans to customers. The ECB can't really fulfill its mandate of price stability if it doesn't have proper control of the supply of the kind of money that people are actually using, which increasingly is electronic and thus non-ECB Euros.

I play with crypto (don't kill me) and it's insane to see how I can send/receive funds between family members in a non-EU country with ~0 fees via a public, open source network AND the funds are there within seconds/minutes depending on network traffic.

Imagine travelling to countries without the euro and MasterCard or Visa doesn't take 3% on the official exchange rate for each of your purchases.

Sure there are new challenges and risks, but the benefits are there too.

EC is Maestro and it has been discontinued. Once your card gets renewed, you basically move to a Mastercard, since they own Maestro/EC More: https://www.mastercard.com/news/europe/en/perspectives/en/2021/blog-from-valerie-nowak-why-this-maestro-is-retiring-after-30-years/

The difference is that european citizens shouldn't be required to deal with profit driven companies (banks) to have access to legal currency.

Technology wise, think of it as some sort of crypto euro. The point is to have the un traceability, privacy and security advantages of crypto, but with a currency that can't be speculated upon that is an actual real currency.

If the central European bank sold 1 digital euro for 1 euro, and bought 1 digital euro for 1 euro, always, the currency would always have a real value attached.

Anyway, I have not read anything on the currency, but color me surprised if they do something that I'd not similar to what I mentioned.

There's not much info because everything is still quite vague. But you can check this article from Euronews as well.

The ECB actually seems to be at the front of central bank digital currency development. Other have just vaguely announced their interest, the ECB has actual ongoing research and prototype development with public conferences, documents and updates.

feels like a resistance act these days..

The idea of a digital Euro is, to be a digital cash equivalent. No central insurance involved that could track the payment, should work offline, ... Just without the hassle of having to deal with physical coins and bills.

There's going to be a limit (3000€?) for how much you can store on the digieuro account

At the moment, the plan is for the digital euro to be issued/"minted" by the ECB and also all transactions will be resolved by the ECB, however the ECB won't offer any sort of digital euro account or banking service, the banks will do that instead. The ECB is planning for the digital euro to be free to use for paying for private customers, free to use for donations or exchanges of money between people and free to use for online payments as well. They also want provisions specifically for poor and underbanked people.

The aim of the research on a digital euro is to have characteristics similar to cash. I suggest reading this op-ed and this interview.

It’s pretty easy to pretend that crimes are necessarily bad but we all know that that isn’t true. Keeping a method around to fund illegal activities is highly necessary for continued social progress. Imagine if every donation to the black panthers had been traced.