A digital euro could remedy President Donald Trump’s anti-central bank digital currency—or CBDC—agenda, a leader of the European Central Bank has said.
European Central Bank executive board member Piero Cipollone told a conference that Europe “needs” a digital euro to counter Trump’s plans for stablecoins, according to a Friday report from Reuters.
The ECB press office confirmed the comments to Decrypt, and said that the bank was “experimenting with different technologies—both centralized and decentralized—in the development of a digital euro.”
President Donald Trump on Thursday signed his first crypto executive order, formally establishing a Presidential Working Group on Digital Asset Markets.
As part of the order, the president said that to protect the sovereignty of the dollar by promoting the “development and growth of lawful and legitimate dollar-backed stablecoins worldwide.”
His Thursday executive order also prohibited “the establishment, issuance, circulation, and use of a CBDC within the jurisdiction of the United States.”
Stablecoins are digital tokens, issued by companies, that are backed by assets such as treasuries, dollars, or gold. They are typically used by crypto traders to enter and exit transactions without having to use the traditional banking system.
Regulators have been paying close attention to the space, and some lawmakers have issued warnings about this part of the cryptosphere.
Cipollone was quoted saying that Trump’s order regarding stablecoins could hurt banks as clients move to using them. “That’s why we need a digital euro,” he said.
Europe’s central bank has been working on a central bank digital currency for years. ECB president Christine Lagarde said in 2020 that such an asset could complement traditional cash and “provide an alternative to private digital currencies.”
CBDCs are digital currencies controlled by a central bank. They are different to virtual assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which are decentralized. But the crypto community has long raised concerns that a CBDC would give authorities too much control over citizens’ spending.
And during his campaign, Trump promised to help the crypto community by never allowing a CBDC to be deployed in the United States, calling the technology a “dangerous threat to freedom.”
Edited by Andrew Hayward
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