It was an interesting talk, especially for the retail digital euro, but there is a section that I think was not clear enough to the point of being incorrect, at least to my understanding. Btw I'm not an economist.
Around 7:00, they talk about wholesale and retail. It is mentioned that the wholesale part is already digitised, which is true. Still, for the purposes of this talk this statement does not help. I will try to explain.
The digital euro is just another effort to create a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), it's just that in the EU, this is how it's called. CBDSs are two by design: retail and wholesale. As mentioned in this talk, the retail is for people, the wholesale is for economic entities like banks, governments, corporations, etc. They skip the wholesale part, saying that it is already digital. But being digital and being a CBDC are not the same at all. CBDCs are planned to be orchestrated by a central bank. This is a higher level of centralisation, compared to the already centralised way that banks operate now. In order to be able to implement this even more centralised way of handling money, economists first need to take into account several things, ie non-central banks must not go bankrupt in the process. Meaning, the wholesale CBDCs are not ready to be deployed, as it seems to me this talk implies.
Other workstrands involving central banks and related stakeholders are testing the functionalities of a possible wholesale digital euro. These initiatives are completely separate from the (retail) digital euro project.
Central banks' involvement in central bank digital currency (CBDC) work remained strong in 2024. Of the 93 central banks surveyed, 91% (85) were exploring either a retail CBDC, a wholesale CBDC or both. At an aggregate level, the exploration of wholesale CBDCs is at more advanced stages than exploration of retail CBDCs.
1 Comments
solo@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 341d
It was an interesting talk, especially for the retail digital euro, but there is a section that I think was not clear enough to the point of being incorrect, at least to my understanding. Btw I'm not an economist.
Around 7:00, they talk about wholesale and retail. It is mentioned that the wholesale part is already digitised, which is true. Still, for the purposes of this talk this statement does not help. I will try to explain.
The digital euro is just another effort to create a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), it's just that in the EU, this is how it's called. CBDSs are two by design: retail and wholesale. As mentioned in this talk, the retail is for people, the wholesale is for economic entities like banks, governments, corporations, etc. They skip the wholesale part, saying that it is already digital. But being digital and being a CBDC are not the same at all. CBDCs are planned to be orchestrated by a central bank. This is a higher level of centralisation, compared to the already centralised way that banks operate now. In order to be able to implement this even more centralised way of handling money, economists first need to take into account several things, ie non-central banks must not go bankrupt in the process. Meaning, the wholesale CBDCs are not ready to be deployed, as it seems to me this talk implies.
Towards a digital euro - European Counsil
2024 survey on CBDCs Aug 2025 - BIS